Contents

Page 5

Page 10

Page 14

Page 18

Page 20

Page 22

Page 24

Page 27

Page 29

Page 32

Page 34

3

Reviews of:

Business Builder: An Intermediate Teacher’s Resource Book by Paul Emmerson (Macmillan Heinemann 1999)Innovation and Best Practice ed by Chris Kennedy from the English Language Teaching Review (Longman2000)Games for Children by Gordon Lewis and Gunther Bedson (OUP 1999)Market Leader by David Cotton, David Falvey and Simon Kent (Longman 2000)A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom by Michael Berman. Crown House PublishingPoetry as a Foreign Language edited by Martin Bates. Availaible From White Adder Press.Drama with Children by Sarah Phillips. OUP 1999 BEBC Distribution, Ablion Close Parkstone Poole, DorsetBH12 3L

ELT and the Real World by Robert O'Neill A typically idiosyncratic account of ELT methodologies, by one of the bestknown writers in the ELT world.

ROLO - a replacement for PPP? by Paul Emmerson New ideas on classroom methodology by a highly experienced author ofBusiness English text-books

Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Kaye Anderson Managing a bi-cultural ELT staffroom by an experienced Director of Studies

Learning, Lexis and Business English by Nick Hamilton The Lexical approach in intensive language learning

Accepting ICT in ELT by Howard Ramsey Some reflections on using the new technology in the language school.

Twelve Unprincipled Eclectic Pictures by Krystof Dabrowski One non-native speaker teacher's account of the delights and disasters ofa Teacher Training course at IH London.

Classroom Ideas:

Colour Cards - Motivating Young Learners by Carol Crombie and Carol DowieAn account of the authors' innovative approach to motivating and stimulat-ing Young Learners of EFL

Giving Low Levels Free Rein by Jo Cooke Some suggestions for giving lower levels a chance to express themselves inthe class-room

Using the Internet in ELT by Karen Momber An account of one school’s experience in using the internet in the classroom.

Authentic Listening by Carina Lewis Using the teacher's voice

The Last Word: IH London - a Profile? by Roger HuntIs this a profile or a quiz?

4

Welcome to a new Journal for a new Millennium . You will noticewe have a new look and two new editors. Susanna is a recentrecruit to IH London, having spent most of her life teachingEnglish and French Literature and Language in Independentschools in Britain. After some years in France teaching BusinessEnglish, she returned to Britain where she joined the ExecutiveCentre in IH London. Rachel has worked as a teacher, DoS andtrainer for IH Worldwide for the last 15 years, in Argentina, Turkeyand Poland. She has been a teacher trainer at IH London for thelast 9 years.

If you want to move forward, it’s always a good idea to look back.Accordingly, we went to the original ‘vision statement’ by one ofthe first editors of the IHJ, Charles Lowe, who wrote that itshould be ‘by teachers for teachers’ and that it should containmaterial ranging from articles based on conference papers andpractical ideas to work in progress from leading thinkers in ourfield of interest. He wanted ‘to encourage debate, give people aplatform, create new ideas, re-float old ideas, debunk myths, andgenerate a new sense of adventure’.

We feel that the contents of this issue fulfil all those requirements.Every contributor teaches or has taught in the IH WorldwideOrganisation. We have new ideas from Nick Hamilton and fromthe two Carols, Crombie and Dowie, old ideas re-examined by Paul Emmerson , practical suggestions on usingnew technology from Karen Momber, debate encouraged byHoward Ramsay, Jo Cooke and Carina Lewis and a mythdebunked (?) by Robert O’Neill. And his sense of adventure iswhat brought Krzysztof Dabrowski to London.

But this is not enough. This is the journal of the IH WorldwideOrganisation: that is, your journal and we need your contributions. We want to know what you think about the ideas

put forward in these pages - we want a letters page - and aboutwhat you read - contribute to our book reviews. Why not tell theworld your story, whether you are fresh off the CELTA or a seasoned professional. - send us your articles. The Journalexists to bring the IH Worldwide Organisation closer together solet’s find out more about each other: look at the pen portrait of IHLondon by Roger Hunt on p34 and send us your own.We’d liketo imagine you, ten minutes between class, coffee in hand, leafing through this journal and being suddenly inspired: toinclude something completely different in your next class, to havea go at the Web at last or to tell us how you do it - or think itshould be done - whatever ‘it’ is.

We’d like to thank colleagues for a huge amount of support andinterest, particularly of course, the editorial board ( ScottThornbury, Jeremy Page, Roger Hunt, Michael Carrier and PippaBumstead who designed the cover). We’d also like to thank PaulRoberts, our immediate and distinguished predecessor, whoacted as midwife to many of the articles you are about to read.And finally we have a little vision statement of our own to add tothat of Charles.

In a changing world ELT is changing too. What used to be aminor area of ELT, namely Business English, is becomingincreasingly important. Indeed, some would say it is THE growtharea in this technological age. Teacher Training is changing radically too as demographics and student loans pressurise thehome market. But the core skills needed by all teachers remainunchanged. We hope to reflect the way in which ELT and IHWorldwide are responding to the challenges of the changingmarket and together to take the Journal successfully forward intothe new century.

Susanna Dammann and Rachel Clark

Editorial

‘ ...the belief, so widely held and so frequently repeated that “language is (a means of) communication” is wrong in a way that hasbeen devastating to any adequate conception of what humans are andhow they differ from other species. Communication is just one use towhich language can be put (and distinguishing between a thing andits uses should surely form the most basic step in any analysis)’

Derek Bickerton; Language & Human Behaviour (London, UCLPress, 1996)

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has enormous intuitiveappeal. Despite this, I have come to believe that at the heart ofCLT - especially in fundamentalist versions of it - we find a naive,even impoverished view of language. To demonstrate what Imean, let me examine six propositions upon which I think CLT isbased. I am going to argue that if these propositions are true atall, they are only superficially and trivially true - and true only inessentially uninteresting ways. In other words, they are just astrue as statements like “Interesting stories are better than boringones”. Such a statement tells us nothing about what makes astory interesting or boring, or why they have the effect that have.I will try to show this through six counter-propositions. Then -finally - I will briefly suggest an alternative - and also suggest reasons why pluralist methodologies are more likely tobe successful than any single orthodoxy

Six fundamentally “trivial” propositions inherent in CLT.

1 Language is primarily a tool of communication. Learning alanguage means learning to perform communicative speech actswith it.In CLT, ‘communication’ means using language to makerequests, give advice, agree and disagree, complain, praise, totry to persuade people to do things, and so on. The focus shouldbe on meaning, not on form. Some supporters of CLT, like GeoffThompson, (1) argue that this is a misconception of CLT.However, even he admits that there are good reasons for this‘misconception’

2 There is something called a ‘communicative syllabus’which replaces and is superior to a structural syllabus’. It is often argued that a typical ‘structuralist’ syllabus focuses onthe grammatical structure of language rather than on the ‘com-municative’ or ‘pragmatic’2 uses of the language. For example,sothe argument goes 3 terms like ‘The Present Continuous’, tellus little or nothing about the fact that typical examples of thisform such as ‘You’re standing in my way’ or ‘You’re driving too

fast’ are complaints, or that one of the most frequent uses of thePresent Progressive is not to talk about actions in the present butabout pre-arranged actions in the future, For this reason, manyCLT supporters used to argue, and still do (4) that language lessons should not be about ‘The Present Continuous’ or ‘ThePresent Perfect’, but about ‘Giving and getting personal information’, ‘Asking for and giving directions’, ‘ExpressingOpinions’, etc.

3 Communicative goals can be specified. We can accuratelydescribe what learners should have learned and be able todo with language at the end of the lesson.An example of a typical ‘communicative goal is given below:-

“By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:• talk about their own jobs and ask classmates about theirs• use the Present Simple accurately and fluently in this context• choose correctly between a/an• pronounce the unstressed form of ‘d you’ in their question.”

4 Good communicative teaching is ‘learner-centred’, not‘teacher-centred’.‘Teacher-centred’ means ‘BAD’ The teacher doles out formalknowledge of the language like a cook giving prisoners thin soupand stale bread in a Victorian prison. ‘Learner-centred’ means‘GOOD’.This view is best summed up for me by what Julian Edge sayson pages 51-53 of ‘Essentials Of Language Learning:

“Many classrooms are arranged so that all students face forward tothe teacher; the message is clear.• the teacher dominates• all information will come from the teacherinteraction between or among students is less valued.”

Edge goes on to describe other seating arrangements whichencourage co-operative, communicative pair-work and group-work. In one picture we see ten or eleven young learners, perhaps in their late teens or early twenties, listening attentivelyto one member of the group talking. In a second picture we seefour learners working together. The learners are smiling, eager,interested, entirely absorbed in the communicative task that theyare performing. These two pictures seem, for me at least, to communicate better than any others the great intuitive appeal of CLT.

5 What matters most is not whether learners learn to use the

The Poverty and Appeal of CLTRobert O’Neill

Robert O’Neill has written more than thirty EFL textbooks and also taught different kinds of learner in very different conditionsin Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Turkey, Brazil and Argentina. His views and opinions are moulded as much by his own experiences of studying foreign languages as his experience of teaching ELT for more than 40 years.

5

language accurately. What matters is that they learn to gettheir message across. Professor John Trim, one of the ‘founders of CLT’, has said that‘children learning in school must be taught that language learning is about communicating, not getting things right’. Trimbelieves in ‘emphasising the importance of repair strategies andof the acceptance of errors’. He asks ‘if certain learner errors areso predictable, how much effort is justified in the attempt to putthem right, instead of developing different ways of enlarging thatperson’s communicative range?’. Instead of correcting mistakes,we should be doing things that will extend the communicativerange of learners.

6 The classroom and the behaviour of teachers and learnersin the classroom should be as similar as possible to thebehaviour of people in the ‘real world’ outside the classroom.Strict turn-taking, ‘display questions’, etc. are ‘uncommunica-tive’ and do not reflect the ‘real world’ outside the classroom.The classroom must become like the world outside the class-room, where we see people using language spontaneously and communicatively.

Six opposing propositions

How can anyone who is not a reactionary, authoritariananti-progressive disagree with an approach based on thesepropositions? To give my own answer to this question, I mustexpress six different propositions.

1‘Generative competence, the ability to use underlying syntax and structure, 5 is one of the foundations of communicative competence. Without it, there is no pragmatic competence worth talking about.I have heard CLT supporters say ‘it doesn’t matter if learners learnthings like irregular verb forms and even less if they understand why we form some questions through inversion andothers through the auxiliary (do/does/did) plus infinitive. Just letthem say what they want to say. Listen to the message, not to thegrammatical form’.

But the grammatical form is part of the message. Grammar is notseparate from meaning. It is an integral part of it. It matterswhether I say ‘I’ll see you if I have time’ or ‘I’d see you if I had time’just as it matters whether I say ‘A man attacked a woman ‘ or‘The woman attacked the man.’. It makes no sense to say“Words carry more meaning than grammar”. Grammar carries avery different kind of meaning that we do not find in words at all.The kind of meaning we get from form, especially syntactic formtells us essential things, such as “who did what, how, and towhom.” It may be possible to communicate very basic messagesusing words alone, but this is a hollow argument. It is also possible and probably more effective to communicate such mes-sages using no words at all. Hunger, thirst, anger, rage, sexualdesire, frustration and interest and most other emotions can all becommunicated through gestures with perhaps a few grunts foremphasis. This is not the kind of “communication training” people

are prepared to pay money or give up time for.Language, as Geoffrey Leach has argued 6 has two differentdomains. There is a ‘generative ‘ and a ‘pragmatic’ domain. Thegenerative domain is syntactic and structural and it is possible tostate general rules, at least, about how those syntactic structuresare formed. The pragmatic domain is concerned with speechacts; these cannot be generated without syntax; but speech-acttheory analyses them purely in terms of their pragmatic effect.Speech act theory tells us nothing about how they are generated,and nothing about how they are learned in the first place.

‘Teachers who spendtime patiently workingwith the whole class,helping them to memorise irregular verbforms or to understandquestion-formation runthe risk of being regarded as ‘uncommunicative’. All languages have very ‘awkward bits’. For example, how dolearners learn irregular verb forms like ‘go-went’ ‘do-did’ inEnglish? Or how do they learn the two primary ways of askingquestions in English? Teachers who spend time patiently workingwith the whole class, helping them to memorise irregular verbforms or to understand question-formation run the risk of beingregarded as ‘uncommunicative’. The ‘narrow’ or fundamentalist version of CLT can easily becomea stifling orthodoxy in which things like ‘rote-learning’, ‘memorisation’, ‘display questions’, ‘teacher-talk’ automaticallymean BAD. None of these things alone is bad. What matters ishow, when and why they are done. Although Thompson andEdge have a much broader vision of CLT than the fundamentalistversion, it is often that narrow version that prevails amongteacher-trainers and other people in strong positions of authority.

2 A language syllabus is more than a list. That is whyexamples of speech-acts cannot be the basis of a syllabus.A list of speech-acts that learners are supposed to perform is nota syllabus. A language syllabus has an internal structure whichrelates objectives such as speech-acts to the underlying syntactic competence that learners need to perform them.Knowing how to perform a particular speech act is more thanknowing a few phrases that are only examples of that speech

6

act. In the real world, typical speech acts have to be modifiedand varied to fit different situations. In the real world, typicalspeech acts can lead to very unpredictable outcomes. A competent speaker has to know different ways of performingthe same speech act. Speakers can do this only if they can generate new examples of the different syntactic structures theyneed to perform typical speech-acts. Unfortunately, ‘communicative’ goals in CLT are usually described so narrowlythat it is impossible to study the necessary syntactic forms properly. The Present Simple, for example, has many other pragmatic and important uses besides ‘talking about your work’.

3 Communicative goals are exercises in illusion rather than reality. It is not possible to specify communicative goals withany precision .It sounds so neat and convincing to say ‘At the end of the lesson learners will be able to talk about their jobs’ or ‘be able togive directions’. If these descriptions mean anything, they mean‘with some luck and a lot of hard work and good teaching, learners may be able to say a little more about their jobs thanthey could at the beginning. They may be able to understand stereotypical directions like ‘To get to the railway station, godown this road, take the first right and then the second left’ butin the real world railway stations are rarely so easy to find. Evennative-speakers are often unable to give directions clearly or tounderstand them. There are no reliable ways of knowing what learners have learnedat the end of any lesson, still less of knowing what learners willactually retain in the long term. Although CLT grew out of a rejection of ‘structuralism’ which wassupposed to be based on behaviourism, 7 communicative goalsin CLT are all described in typical behaviourist terminology. Thisimplies that language is just behaviour and that communicativecompetence can be described in simple behaviourist terms. Itcannot be. Genuine communicative competence is muchbroader than that.

‘CLT grew out of a rejection of ‘structuralism’ which was supposed to be based on behaviourism’.4 Good teaching requires an understanding of both ‘whole-class’ and ‘pair/group-methods.Very often, far more often than most CLT supporters are prepared to admit, 8 competent whole-class teaching is moreefficient than ‘pair’ and group work.In the ‘real world’, real teachers have to deal with real learners

and they are often very different from the eager, motivated learners in the pictures in Edge’s book. Learners in the classrooms I have in mind, typically all speak the same language;Spanish in Madrid, Polish in Warsaw. Japanese in Tokyo, and soon. They do not use English outside the classroom and theyrarely if ever hear it used by anybody else. There is only one person in the classroom who has a reasonablecommand of English who is able to engage them in active use ofEnglish in which they also hear someone using that languagecompetently. That person is the teacher and CLT methodologyinsists that that person should ‘cut teacher-talking-time to an absolute minimum’.It is true that with so-called ‘teacher-fronted’ methods, someteachers talk too much. It is just as true that the speciousdescription ‘learner-centred’ covers an equally wide spectrum oflazy, ignorant, incompetent teachers who talk glibly of ‘learnerautonomy’ and fail to do any of the things that traditional butcompetent teachers in the past did to help learners towards trueautonomy.The issue is not ‘teacher-fronted’ versus so-called ‘learner-centred’. The question is ‘how can teachers learn to varytheir methods and approach, sometimes using ‘whole-class’techniques and sometimes ‘pair/group work? When and whydoes one approach work better than another?’ A methodologythat does not recognise this is not capable of providing teacherswith the skills they really need.

5 A reasonable degree of accuracy is an essential part of fluency. This is not at all the same argument as ‘learners must get thingsright from the very beginning’. But neither is this the same thingas saying that because many mistakes are predictable, they arenot correctable. Trim fails to make an essential distinction, or toask one of the many serious questions that should be part of anyserious discussion of ELT: ‘What kind of correction strategiesseem to work and which do not?’ My answer to that question is‘regular form-focused practice as well as many different opportunities to use the forms for a variety of pragmatic purposes’

6 There are essential differences between using your own language and trying to use a language you do not know well.These differences help to explain the differences in behaviour ofpeople in the foreign language classroom and in the streets outside the classroom.The first and most essential difference is that people in thestreets outside the classroom are using their own language tocommunicate. They learned that language through a long andcomplex process that is part of their natural development.Children in very different cultures begin using language more orless at the same age, and go through very similar stages ofdevelopment. This suggests very strongly that the process of L1acquisition is genetically triggered and biologically driven. That iswhy we can use our native language without having to thinkabout underlying syntactic form. It is a language with which theyare as intimately familiar as they are with their own bodies. In the street outside people are not only using language but

7

doing a wide variety of other things; walking dogs, kissing, reading papers, or even committing criminal acts. Our reasonsfor being in the street are very different form our reasons for beingin a classroom. That is why different forms of behaviour areexpected in the two places, It would not be possible to learn orteach anything in a classroom if we allowed all the learners in itto behave more or less as they do in the streets outside. Thedemand that classrooms should be ‘more like the real world outside’ is based on a profound misunderstanding of both whatwe can do well in classrooms and how and why we do what wedo when we are in the streets outside.

Many typical forms of classroom behaviour, such as strict turn-taking, teacher-dominated interaction, and so on, make it possible to focus on things that we normally would not focus onin the world outside the classroom because in the world outsidethe classroom we would not have time to focus on them or eventhink about them. L2 learning (and I believe it is learning and NOTacquisition) is something very different, despite some apparentand very superficial similarities.

An Alternative To CLT

What I am going to suggest works for me - and I believe it maywork for many others. But this does not mean it can work foreverybody. The principle behind this is that NO single method orapproach can work for all teachers or for all students. We recognise that different learners have different preferred styles oflearning. If this is true or learners and their learning styles, it isalso true of teachers and their teaching styles. There is NO scientific evidence of any kind that proves or even suggests thattypical CLT techniques work well or work at all under all conditions and with all learners. In fact, what little evidence thereis points to the opposite conclusion. In a case such as this, it isfar better to endorse pluralistic teaching strategies and techniques which allow for greater diversity and choice not justfor individual learners but also for individual teachers. But,though I do not present it as the alternative. - what is my alternative?

Teaching as Narrative

As Scott Thornbury 9 has argued, good lessons have an “affective” or “aesthetic” dimension which is just as important astheir pragmatic or pedagogic dimensions. For me, this aesthetic dimension fulfils certain conditions:

1 The lesson, the format and material should arouse interest thatgoes beyond the language itself.2 There should be a pleasing and logical relationship betweenthe different parts of the lesson.3 There should be something that the participants can look forward to besides the end of the lesson, and the chance toescape and go home.4 The language that was used or generated during the lessonshould be memorable in some way.

good lessons have an“affective” or “aesthetic” dimension which is just as important as their pragmatic or pedagogicdimensionsThere are also a number of “more practical”considerations:

1 Is there something about the format of the lesson that makesit easily retrievable? For instance, if I am the learner, and didn’tunderstand parts of it or have forgotten it for some other reason,is there some way I could look at or listen to parts of it again asI go home on the bus or tram, or when I am at home the following day?2 Does the format and material of the lesson not only provideuseful “input” for the learner but also lead to “output” and language production by the learner? 3 Does the material and the format help to generate spontaneous language-use that is not easily predictable?4 Are there features of the language and the lesson format thatare likely to stretch the expressive potential of the learners? Thatis, is there something that helps the learners to improve theirgenerative and pragmatic competence rather than simply usefossilised resources?

My own solution is to adopt a “narrative” approach to the lessonsI teach. As it happens, a fairly short text is usually the beginning,but never the end of the lesson. But the lesson would not havea narrative structure at all if that was all I did. And it is quite possible to teach within a narrative structure and not use a “text”in the conventional sense . A lesson has a narrative structure ifthese conditions are met.

In other words, at each stage of the lesson, the participants havesomething to look forward to in the next stage; it may be a crucial piece of information they will hear in listening practice - itmay be as simple as the answer to the question -’What did Marydo after she saw Bill kissing her best friend in the living room?’ oras complex as ‘What led Watson and Crick to believe that thestudy of viruses could illuminate the secrets of DNA, and how didRosemary Franklin’s work help them to discover its double helixstructure?’

The purpose of the narrative structure is not simply to arouse andsustain interest. It is to keep learners involved with the language.If, however, the narrative does no more than keep learnersinvolved with the language, it will fail as vehicle of language-learning. The narrative has to lead to language-production by the

8

learner. For example, there may be ‘narrative gaps’ that can beinterpreted in different ways - and which require learners toextend their pragmatic and generative repertoires as they do so.The texts should also provide “‘parallels’ which invite learners tocompare their lives, views and preferences with each other as wellas the characters who appear in the text.

In my own case, these texts are not likely to be “authentic” in thenarrow sense - unless, of course, I am writing for or teaching agroup that can “respond authentically to authentic material”10.

The texts or conversations I write for or use with typical pre-intermediate classes will either be specially adapted or specially written. They have to be accessible and short enough toallow for a range of other exercises, tasks and activities to takeplace within a typical lesson (45 - 90 minutes ). Suppose, forexample, I want a dialogue in which someone deliberately lies, orthreatens someone, or promises to do something and then laterfails to fulfil that promise. Where could I find an “authentic “ example of such dialogues? When people know they are beingrecorded or observed; they fall into neutral styles that reveal as lit-tle as possible of their true intentions or feelings, especially if theyintend to deceive someone. This is just as true when they areangry, jealous, in love or want advice about a personal problem.Unless they are pathological (and probably boring) exhibitionists,they will not behave authentically or normally if they know they arebeing observed or recorded.

Yet all of us know - at least in our own languages -what people arelikely to say in such situations. Why should we refuse to use thoseintuitions in the materials we create or use for our students? It maybe that the products of such intuitions have to be “idealised” in various ways in order to make it possible for non-native speakers tounderstand them, but this makes them more - not less - useful for our purposes. Typical transcripts ofnative-speakers talking to each other are often incomprehensible,even for other native-speakers. All good writers or speakers adaptand modify what they say or write for the people they are speakingwith or writing for. The logical conclusion of the “authentic only”argument is that we should treat non-native speakers of English ina way good writers and speakers of English would never treat anybody else; that is - that they should ignore the problems non-native speakers have with English and speak or write as ifthose problems simply did not exist. What EFL needs today is writers capable of developing skills thatwriters in other genres regard as essential: they must be able todevelop the kinds of story, plot and character that can keepgroups of very different learners interested in the language. Thetexts and conversations they write must exemplify as naturally aspossible how people speak and write outside the classroom.However, the texts and dialogues must also serve the distinct pedagogic purposes that I have tried to categorise here.

Footnotes

1 Some Misconceptions about Communicative Language Teaching; English Language Teaching Journal Volume 50/1 January 96.2 Pragmatic’ in this sense is used in the sense Geoffrey Leechuses the term in Principles of Pragmatics; the meaning languageacquires when used socially, by and among people, in order toperform typical speech acts.3 From Beginners’ Choice , Mohamed & Acklam, Longman 1992.I use this example only because it is quoted by Julian Edge inEssentials of English Language Teaching. 4 EFL Gazette, December 97 5 See “the origins of syntax” in Bickerton’s “Language & HumanBehaviour”, pp 66-84” for a discussion of the importance of syntax not only for language but for human evolution and cognition”.6 Principles of Pragmatics (London, Longman, 1983)7 Structuralism is one of the major philosophical movements ofthe 20th Century, and its European form is emphatically notbehaviourism8 See for example Wong-Fillmore, L. When Does teacher Talk WorkAs Input? Input In Second Language Acquisition; Newbury House,19859 “Good lessons share features with, among other art forms,good films. They have plot, theme, rhythm, flow and a sense ofending.’ Scott Thornbury, “Lesson Art and Design”, ELT Journal,January 199910 Henry Widdowson has said this, but I cannot rememberwhere.

9

10

What is ROLO? Some lessons have an input —> output shape. These are ‘presentation’ lessons where language is presented then practised then produced. Other lessons have an output —>input shape. These are fluency or ‘skills work’ lessons where themain focus is on extended speaking or writing and there is feedback at the end. Let’s stop and think for a moment aboutthis feedback.

I have coined the term ROLO to describe a technique of doingdiagnostic language feedback after tasks and skills practice.ROLO is accuracy and form based language work, but becauseit comes after student output the language cannot be pre-selected. It is diagnostic - you wait to see what problemsand needs the students have while actually speaking or writing.

Reformulate Output = start with students’ real output (speakingor writing) in a task, then elicit/give more appropriate language asfeedback.Lightly = do this quickly, perhaps with a concept question, butwithout a heavy explanation.Often = do this often, and revise the same points over several feedback slots.

ROLO in action

Let’s take a look inside a classroom where ROLO is happening.The students have just finished a speaking activity: it could be acarefully prepared task, or a role-play, or a discussion. It mighthave arisen out of something prepared for homework (perhaps anewspaper article), or it might have arisen spontaneously (perhaps continuing a discussion from the coffee break or talkingabout something that happened to one of the students lastnight). While the students were speaking the teacher didn’t interfere much. Instead he/she was busy writing down a numberof language points where:• there was good use of language that could be brought to theattention of other students, or• there was an error, or• where a student needed language they didn’t haveNow the activity has finished and it’s time for the language feedback slot. The teacher stands at the board and goesthrough the points, writing up what s/he heard on the board witha full, clear context and eliciting (if possible) or supplying (if not)corrections. Good language use is congratulated and theteacher explains why it was good. Each language point takesbetween 30 seconds and a few minutes to cover, and the

teacher aims to cover perhaps 10-15 points in total, includinggrammar, functional expressions, lexis and pronunciation.

Let’s continue in our imaginary classroom and look in more detailat just one of the points chosen by the teacher: we’ll take a ‘classic’ grammar area as an example. The teacher heard anexample where the student used past simple instead of presentperfect, and wants to focus on it briefly. The teacher writes upthe example on the board and then uses a concept question: ‘isthis referring to the past, the present, or the past and the present?’ If the students answer correctly and can give the correct form, the teacher writes this on the board and thenmoves on. The teacher may at this point do some controlledpractice such as a mini-drill - asking a few students to giveanother similar example or a personalized example. If the students are confused or cannot answer the teacher maytake a few minutes to give a very simple explanation (perhaps atime line on the board) and/or refer to a page in a grammar bookfor self-study after the class. Then the teacher moves on.

Looking back at the previous paragraphs we can see that:

1 the teacher starts with student output (unpredictable before theactivity began)2 the student output is reformulated (the correct version beingelicited or given)3 this is done lightly (short time taken in class, just a simple concept question/explanation)4 this is done often (the same language point will be returned toin other feedback sessions).

The simple concept questions/explanations are very important, soas to move forward quickly and avoid a heavy grammar session improvised on the spot. Here are some other simple concept questions to elicit correct language:

1st/2nd conditional mistake: ‘Is it a real possibility or animaginary possibility?’ ‘So it should be ...?’Definite/indefinite article mistake: ‘Do we know which X?’ ‘So it should be ...?’Present simple/continuous mistake: ‘Is it usual/permanent or inprogress now/temporary?’ ‘So it should be ...?’What happens if students can supply the answer?In order to reformulate the example on the board or answer the concept question the students have done some mental processing.They have activated language knowledge which:• may have been presented and practised already on earlier English

ROLO: Reformulate Output Lightly but OftenPaul EmmersonPaul Emmerson taught Business English in Portugal for many years. He now teaches at the International House ExecutiveCentre, London, and is the author of Business Builder (Macmillan Heinemann). He is a regular conference presenter on allaspects of BE methodology and does teacher training in Poland and Hungary.

courses• may be intuitive through general exposure to English Now they aremuch nearer to being able to actively produce this language in its correct form the next time they need it. And the teacher helped themto this. Well done.

Usually the students will be able to supply the answer as the teacherwill choose language points within the students’ capability - thingsthat they know but can’t produce actively just yet.

What happens if students can’t supply the answer?

If the simple concept questions and prompts fail to elicit the correct language, then either:

1 The teacher simply gives the correct language (perhaps with avery short explanation).2 The student is referred to a grammar reference/practice bookfor self-study.3 It might have to be presented more fully and conventionally in another lesson.4 The language point is beyond the scope of the course or theabilities of the students and the teacher refrains from dealing withit again with that particular group in that way.

Review: why ROLO?

1 Because you start with real mistakes, lacks and strengthsrevealed by students doing an activity in class just now. This ishighly motivating. You have a ready-made context and the students have high levels of attention, ready and waiting to correct themselves.

2 Because it offers variety and flexibility. You can start a lessonwith an open-ended task, skills activity or discussion and notworry about where the lesson goes. Starting a lesson like this isa natural, lively, fun thing to do - for you and your students. Youknow that at the end, whatever happens, there’s going to besome solid accuracy-based language work.

3 Because it’s a very good way to activate language. The studentis offered the chance to do some mental processing: to self correct and use passive understanding. ROLO allows studentsto feel they are making progress by correcting themselves andother classmates, and this can happen naturally before activeproduction.

4 Because it requires zero preparation. Materials can of course beused to stimulate and structure the initial task or discussion, butthey aren’t needed. ROLO can follow from students speakingspontaneously about anything at any time anywhere. You just need to take notes as preparation for the feedback slot.5 Because in the initial task students are free to produce whatever language they want.

How is ROLO language work different toPresent-Practice-Produce?

The ROLO feedback slot has a language/accuracy focus, justlike PPP, but the emphasis is on activation of language ratherthan presenting it for the first time. To make the differencebetween ROLO and PPP very clear, let’s take the three stages ofPPP:

a) Presentation of language may be absent in ROLO, or may bereduced in time and complexity. Students often know the correctform and supply it themselves, and when they don’t a very simple explanation from the teacher or another student suffices.Often ‘presentation’ is self-accessed in a grammar book outsidethe class in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee.b) Controlled practice of language may be absent in ROLO, ormay be reduced in time and complexity. The teacher may justelicit/correct and move on. Alternatively the teacher may chooseto do a quick drill, perhaps asking the students to think of similar, personalized examples using the language item.c) Freer practice of language will probably be absent in ROLO.The teacher will simply wait for another task on another daywhen s/he hears the language point being used wrongly, orbeing needed. S/he will then repeat the process of ROLO withthe same language point in a new example/context.

How does ROLO differ from PPP in terms oflearning theory?

Mostly in terms of the length of time that students need to ‘getit’. PPP assumes that students will be able to produce the language item after the final ‘P’, and this usually means by theend of a 50-minute lesson. Of course PPP is not so simplisticand says that there will also have to be opportunities for revision.

ROLO, however, assumes a much longer period of receptiveunderstanding before production is possible. Students will probably have to go through these stages over severalweeks/months/years:

1 being unable to produce correct forms, but being able to supply them when they see a mistake on the board2 trying to use forms, doing so tentatively and with mistakes3 trying to use forms, doing so with fewer mistakes and immediate self-correction (even while speaking)4 being able to use correct forms more fluently, but still withsome mistakes

ROLO will help this process by returning to language items several times in several lessons. Meanwhile, and regardless ofthe students’ progress in producing correct forms, their ability tocommunicate effectively and confidently will have been increasedenormously as a result of the tasks and skills practice activities thatbegin a ROLO lesson and that a ROLO approach encourages.

11

Isn’t ROLO just the same as ‘task-basedlearning’?

TBL seems to mean different things to different people but certainly - like ROLO - it involves tasks rather than presentation-type lessons. However, there are some differences:• In TBL preparation of language for the task is very important.In ROLO there may or may not be language preparation beforethe task. Certainly students can plan and ask the teacher for language, but it is not essential. Perhaps in ROLO preparation ofideas is more important than preparation of language, so thatstudents have rehearsed in their minds some content and thetask/discussion is more fluent and interesting.• ROLO can follow a lot of things that are not really ‘tasks’ - forexample a discussion that just started spontaneously at thebeginning of the lesson.• In TBL the students know that the task is to practise the language they have prepared. In ROLO the students can produce whatever language they like.• In TBL there may be a short feedback slot, but it is not essential to the lesson - the language focus happens before thetask. In ROLO the language work is done after the task in a feedback slot, and this is a key part of the lesson.• TBL makes much use of models of good language use beforea task (e.g. native speakers doing the same task). ROLO doesn’t.• In TBL there is a report-back stage on how the students did thetask. I have never really understood this, but anyway it’s lackingin ROLO.

So ROLO is not the same as TBL. Amongst other well-knownapproaches to teaching/learning the closest to ROLO is probably ‘Test-Teach-Test’. In a way ROLO is an explicit development of what the ‘Teach’ bit of ‘Test-Teach-Test’ actuallyinvolves.

‘language will be generated in a natural, lively, spontaneous way asthe class follows its owndirection and energy’Conclusion

On many teacher training courses or in situations like observedlessons (e.g. for a British Council inspection) the lesson plan withits clearly stated language aims rules supreme. This is for a goodreason. But for the sake of variety it should be possible to do language work diagnostically, and this could be encouraged.With a ROLO approach you cannot specify language aims on thelesson plan because you want to work with the language that the

students produce in real time in class, and this is by natureunpredictable.

In fact ROLO can present an even bigger problem for the lessonplan because the initial task/discussion could go anywhere. Infact as a teacher you think it’s excellent if the lesson goes off ata tangent, because language will be generated in a natural, lively,spontaneous way as the class follows its own direction andenergy. The important thing is that you’ll come in with a strongaccuracy-based language slot at the end based on the notesyou take. The justification for working in this way is variety, thatyou want to focus on activation rather than presentation, andthat it is motivating for the students to start with their own language rather than that chosen by a teacher or coursebookauthor.

How easy is it to do language work in assessed lessons by diagnostic feedback on unpredictable student output? How often is this approach encouraged in teacher training?

12

13

Presentation-Practice lessons

Language items are covered one at a time, in detail.

Language items are pre-selected, either from the pages of a coursebook or the lesson plan of a teacher.

Focus on the presentation of new language. Appropriate for first contact between learner and language item.

Presentation stage is nearly always followed by controlled practice.

Controlled practice stage nearly always preceded by a presentation.

Generally precedes skills practice/task.

In courses where PPP lessons are frequent, the grammar syllabus is explicit and coursebook or teacher led.

In courses where PPP lessons are frequent, grammar work has a high visibility and is seen as essential and necessary for all students, both during class time and as homework.

Appropriate in all courses for variety.

Appropriate as the main way of doing language work:

• on extensive courses• where the backbone of the syllabus is the English verb tense system• where the students’ objective is accuracy of form• where the students are studying to pass an exam

Appropriate for large groups.

Appropriate when the students see native speaker grammar use as the ultimate goal/model to which they are aspiring.

Role of the teacher is classroom manager, managing the flow of language from off the pages of the coursebook or lesson materials to the students.

ROLO lessons

Many language items are covered in one feedback session. Each item is covered lightly and often

Language items are not pre-selected: they arise naturally as aneed/mistake during students’ output in the lesson.

Focus on activation of language already learned or exposed to. Appropriate for all subsequent occasions when language item isneeded or misused.

Presentation (explanation) in feedback may or may not be followedby controlled practice.

Controlled practice in feedback may or may not be preceded by apresentation.

Generally follows skills practice/task.

In courses where ROLO lessons are frequent, the grammar syllabus is implicit and student needs led.

In courses where ROLO lessons are frequent, grammar generallyhas a low visibility. Detailed grammar work is seen as a choice available to students, with a further choice between class and self-study time.

Appropriate in all courses for variety.

Appropriate as the main way of doing language work:

• on short, intensive courses• where the backbone of the syllabus is topics and functional skills• where the students’ objective is accuracy of meaning• where the students are studying to increase their ability to communicate effectively

Appropriate for small groups. Absolutely essential for one-to-one.

Appropriate when the students mainly come into contact with othernon-native speakers who will not notice/mind their mistakes.

Role of the teacher is language consultant, managing the flow oflanguage from the students back to the students.

Summary This comparison should make things clear.

As can be seen, ROLO makes particular sense in Business English and one-to-one, but it could be used for variety, motivation and activation in any context.

14

One of the questions I am often asked in Lviv is: “Why did youcome to Ukraine?”. Translated, this invariably means : “Are youcrazy? Why would anyone in their right mind come to a countrythat we are so desperately trying to leave?”

In most of these cases Ukrainians are wondering how aWesterner can possibly cope with the living conditions; for example how a foreigner can tolerate having water for only 6hours a day. They are not usually thinking about how much moredifficult it often is, to get to grips with a different culture, wherepeople’s reactions to events and situations are not always thesame as mine, and is frequently mystifying. Nor are they thinkingabout the management aspects of working with a group of people from two different cultures who have diverse educationalbackgrounds, a variety of different work experience and possiblyquite different career aspirations.

I am sure we are all familiar with situations where our responsesare at variance with those of another culture. A fairly typicalWesterner’s reaction to a problem in the workplace is to sit downwith those concerned, to analyse the problem, and figure out asolution - in other words to exercise some control over the situation, believing not only that such control is possible, but alsodesirable. However, the last 50 years or so have not given people in Ukraine much cause to believe that such behaviour isnecessarily useful or feasible.

In a school where the predominant culture is other than one’sown, that is, not an English-speaking one as in perhaps themajority of IH schools, these differences of attitudes to situations,coupled with differences in educational background, work experience and lifestyles, affect one’s role as DoS - the way oneattempts to row the boat, facing forwards or backwards, withone or two paddles, heading upstream or downstream.

I don’t pretend to have too many answers or to have found somesignificant research on the subject, but I can air some of the challenges and opportunities we encountered at LVIV, andtogether come up with some practical ways of dealing with theproblems these divergences sometimes cause.

We can identify several areas of difference between local teachers and native speaker teachers.Perceptions of status and attitudes towards those in authoritymay vary in different cultures. By and large, in Western cultures,while there is respect for those in positions of authority, modernapproaches to management tend to favour democratic-decision-making processes and “open-door” management styles.

It is considered acceptable to challenge the views of such people, and that such challenges can be used constructively tothe benefit of the organisation. In other cultures, the managermay play a much more autocratic role, may be considered to bean “expert” and therefore to be fully responsible for all decision-making. A manager’s decisions are final, and there maybe little room for negotiation.

How does this affect one’s role as DoS?

First, at teachers’ meetings it is sometimes difficult to get localteachers involved in decision-making. Native-speaker teachersair their views much more readily and openly. This can createsome false impressions :• That the native-speakers are running the show; ie taking toomuch control• That the local teachers are either uninterested or don’t haveany opinions• That the DoS is making all the decisions

Secondly, because the local teachers are unaccustomed toexpressing their views openly it may take a great deal of time,patience and probing to get to the real heart of the issue.

To deal with these problems I make sure I take any issues of general concern that are raised with me on a one-to-one basisafter meetings, back to a full meeting, hoping to show that suchissues can be dealt with at a team or group level without causing undue conflict, and can in this way be effectivelyresolved.

Thirdly, it may be necessary on occasions to be somewhat autocratic in order to get things done. Asking nicely doesn’talways work! And sometimes teachers simply want a decision tobe made and handed down. There’s a cultural-linguistic issuehere, too. A request in English such as “Could you possibly doa placement interview, please?” will normally evoke a positivereply from a native speaker of English. For a Ukrainian therequest may well appear as exactly that and a flat refusal may begiven.

Similarly, I am somewhat taken aback when a request from aUkrainian is framed as: “I want you to do an interview”.

Professional Development

In general, local teachers need assistance with :• preparing lessons using authentic materials, such as

“Row, row, row your boat.......” The DoS as people manager Kaye R. Anderson

Kaye Anderson has worked in IH Budapest where she took the Diploma and proved an excellent student of Spanish. She iscurrently DoS in IH Lviv.

newspaper or magazine articles, songs and videos. This mayinvolve help with transcribing listening texts as well as the development of tasks and activities• lexical aspects of a lesson, especially at higher levels• project-based learning where students have considerable freedom in the language they produce and the procedure is lessteacher-controlled• teaching higher levels eg developing confidence in using “freer”approaches to lesson structure, such as the “jungle path” methodand what they want from seminars is complete lesson packages, rather than ideas that need to be adapted.

On the other hand, native speaker teachers need assistance with :

• structuring lessons coherently• linguistic analysis • ways of presenting grammar clearlyand what they want from seminars is extension and revision of whatthey covered on their CELTA course eg drilling techniques, ways ofteaching vocabulary, how to use rods etc, which the local teachershave mostly seen and done before.

Career Options

For local teachers there may appear to be few :• the likelihood of getting a permanent position as DoS is not great• the possibility of transferring to another IH school depends on anumber of factors : the school they are currently working in, the par-ticular country they live in, their personal and family circumstances. The introduction of the exchange system betweenschools has the potential to provide interesting and stimulatingopportunities for local teachers, and the Soros schools are looking ata similar idea between their schools, which may make realisation of the idea much more feasible for teachers in EasternEurope.

‘the exchange systembetween schools hasthe potential to provideinteresting and stimu-lating opportunities forlocal teachers’.From the school’s point of view the local teachers represent a stable core of growing expertise. Management needs to recognisethe value of this and demonstrate its appreciation in concreteways. It also needs to be aware of the importance of continuedprofessional development, looking at ways to enable teachers todo the DELTA as well as considering the advantages of teacherstaking time out to work in other countries or schools.

For native speakers, by comparison, the options seem unlimited.• teaching experience in a variety of schools and countries• doing the DELTA and Masters courses• promotion to AdoS, DoS and other management positions

From the school’s point of view, these teachers are transients,who usually stay a year and move on, with the school gaining little from that first year’s teaching experience. For this reasonnative speaker teachers may not get all the professional development they need, and may be “used” to teach lots of different classes once a week as “the native-speaker”, beforethey disappear to another school.

Local Teachers Native-Speaker Teachers

Strong academic background Varied academic backgroundsVery good knowledge of linguistics Often incomplete knowledge of linguistics

0-6+ years TEFL experience Zero TEFL teaching experience ie straight off CELTA courseFluent in L1 Beginners in L1

Not yet completely fluent and accurate in L2 Fluent in L2

Educational experience favoured methods of teaching Educational experience varied, but usually favoured methods ofwith the teacher as expert, dependence on published texts, teaching with the teacher as facilitator, providing opportunities with little room for creativity and little attention paid to the for creativity, expression of own ideas, originality, analysis and development of skills of analysis and evaluation. evaluation.

15

DOS’s face the problem of catering for the differing needs, educational backgrounds and strengths of local and n-s teachers. There are a number of dichotomies here, shown in the table below :

The effect of this is that the professional development of staff needs to be handled very much on an individual level, sometimes making it difficult to provide seminars which are relevant to all staff.

Teacher-Student Relationships

These are inevitably different: native speakers have a certain status by virtue of just being that, and they enjoy a built-in information-gap which they can readily and usefully exploit intheir lessons. What student wants to tell a local teacher aboutthe Christmas traditions with which they are both familiar? On theother hand, local teachers share a common educational and cultural background with their students, which means they havea clear insight into their students’ prior language learning experience and the specific problems they encounter in learningEnglish.

It may be difficult for local teachers to adopt the role of a non-autocratic figure in the classroom - essential for the affective climate of a language learning classroom. This may arise fromthe teacher’s own learning experiences, but is perhaps morelikely as a result of student expectations from someone of thesame background.

Extra-Curricular Activities

Although it depends on how such activities are managed -whether teachers are paid overtime or not, for example, - theremay be some difficulty getting local teachers to participate.

Their weekends are more likely to be devoted to family (family lifeis very important in Ukrainian culture), and in my school, toteaching private students to boost their salaries. This means thatthe English Club in recent times has largely been run -fortunatelywillingly - by the teachers, who enjoy the contact with studentsoutside the regular classroom and happily acknowledge the situation local teachers are in.

Resource Development

There is a conflict of interests here between Native speakers andlocal teachers. Local teachers tend to build their own files ofresources and supplementary materials on the basis that they willuse them again and again over the years. They tend to add relatively little material, such as pelmanism sets, to the general files.

This effectively disadvantages the first-year native speaker teacherwho comes into the school with practically nothing. The approachI have decided on is to encourage the n-s teachers to add to thefiles to save future and existing colleagues from hours of preparation. Because of their own intrinsic transience they quicklycome to appreciate the value of materials prepared by others andhappily add useful material to the general files.

As I mentioned earlier, local teachers are not as confident as nativespeaker teachers in devising original worksheets or tasks, mainlybecause they feel their English is not good enough. Transcribingspoken texts such as songs and video dialogues is also a difficulttask for non-native speakers of English. Some resistance to developing their own materials also stems from “belief in the

expert” and a resulting dependence on professionally writtenmaterial. This is a problem in terms of developing tests, too, wherequestions for a reading text often need to be created.

‘teachers tend to build their own files ofresources and supplementary materialson the basis that theywill use them again andagain over the years’

One solution to this problem is to give whatever assistance onecan in the development of such material eg help a teacher transcribe a video dialogue and then together work out tasks andactivities to go with it. This helps build confidence in their ability to do it themselves.

Building Relationships

The importance of building relationships in a workplace where themajority of the teaching staff are permanent cannot be underestimated. The fact that the DoS and n-s teachers are transient is a significant factor, and maybe a problematic one interms of their relationships with one another as well as their relationships with local staff. From the local teacher’s point of viewthere seems little to be gained from making friends with someonewho’ll be gone in 12 months. Another important aspect is thatwhere most of the staff are permanent, the foreigners have to fitinto a workplace culture which is well-established - they don’t create that culture in the way that it happens where most of thestaff are itinerant native speakers. And just how soon can a newcomer catch on to in-house jokes and traditions? I was gladI had 9 months to figure out through careful observation exactlywhat I was supposed to do on my birthday.The relationships that are relevant here are as follows :

• between DoS and local teachers• between DoS and native speaker teachers• between local teachers and native speaker teachers

In my experience developing relationships of trust and collegialitywith local teachers has been relatively slow. This is quite understandable, and highlights a strong reason for DoS contractsin such schools to be of two-year duration.

Where there are few native speaker teachers and few foreignersin the city, relationships between them inevitably form quickly,

16

regardless of status. I have found myself in the role of mentor, cityguide and shopping-mate to a greater or lesser extent with allnative speaker staff. There is a minor difficulty here sometimes interms of maintaining that little bit of distance that the role of DoSrequires.

Relationships between local and native speaker teachers can bemore problematic. Foreigners lose their novelty value after a fewyears and local teachers have their own families and friends tospend their free-time with. Inside school the use of L1 in theteachers’ room and socialising areas of the school can be a problem. Outlaw it, if you can. In my situation this has seemedneither possible or desirable, but changing dynamics such as theintroduction of new part-timers and the arrival of new personalities has improved a situation which often left nativespeaker teachers feeling isolated and excluded. In an attempt toovercome this, we have decided to establish a “buddy system”where one or two or even three local teachers will assist newcomers in school matters, survival issues etc.

In conclusion here are a few suggestions for ensuring a smooth-running bi-cultural staff-room:

1 Ensure that native speaker teachers are given every opportunityto learn the native language, and encourage them to take anongoing responsibility for doing so.2 Ask local teachers to take on the roles of guides, mentors etcwith specific tasks over a set period of time, followed by both parties reporting back on the effectiveness and usefulness of theexercise.3 Focus professional development on the individual, giving different kinds of assistance according to differing needs andwants.4 Be wary of throwing out the course-book! Experienced localteachers and inexperienced native speaker teachers both needthe support of a reliable framework for their teaching.5 Consider assigning n native speakers to English Club and othersocial activities as part of their special contribution to the school.6 Discuss cultural differences openly, especially those that showup in language which are of professional interest, and discouragethe kind of criticism foreigners often indulge in as a reaction toculture shock.7 A mentor, for you as DoS, from outside the school, probablysomewhere in IH World Organisation, is extremely useful. This isespecially necessary when you are in an isolated situation.Judging what is “normal” can become quite difficult and you canrun the risk of making elephants out of flies, as the Ukrainians sonicely put it - or doing just the opposite.

‘we sit in the middle ofour boats, with ourbacks to the future, rowing madly, sometimes with the current and sometimesagainst’

When I first discussed the idea of this article with the Director ofmy school, I asked her for some ideas about the title - aUkrainian proverb or the like. Her suggestion was : “When youlive with wolves, you must hunt with the wolves.” I rejected itbecause of the negative associations that we (Ukrainians too)have connected with wolves. But the saying nevertheless holdsa good deal of truth. As DoSes in foreign countries we have nochoice but to get alongside our local staff and “feel” their problems, in the same way as we should do with our nativespeaker staff. In so doing we can enhance the very valuable rolethey play in our schools.

To return to my other metaphor - as DoSes we sit in the middleof our boats, with our backs to the future, rowing madly, sometimes with the current and sometimes against. Althoughthe time we spend in a school may be comparatively short in theoverall scheme of things, the least we can do is row the boat asgently and merrily as possible while we’re at the helm.

17

18

The following are some ideas on how we might help students tobecome better learners by giving them skills they can take awayand continue to use after their course. It is based on my attemptsto implement a lexical approach in my teaching and my ownexperience as an Intermediate level learner of Turkish. There arefour main areas that I have been working on.

Changing students’ perceptions of languageand learning

We probably all use some form of Needs Analysis as a way ofdetermining course content in Business English teaching, butwhat actually does it tell us? I’ve come to see that it is not necessarily about students’ actual needs, but often more abouttheir previous learning experience, hence the frequently heardstatement ‘I need to improve my grammar.’ There’s a very familiar old Chinese saying that if you give someone a fish, youfeed them for a day. Whereas if you teach them to fish, you feedthem for a lifetime. In my experience, teaching single items ofgrammar makes very little difference to what students are able tosay, and seems only to satisfy the needs of the lesson. There isalso a very real issue of cost and benefit for a Business studenton a short intensive course, not to mention the debate about thenature of International English in the business world.

In response to this, I try to show students that there are otherways of looking at language learning. So, in a first lesson withnew students I ensure there is time for detailed feedback on thelanguage the students are using and the type of errors they aremaking. I then focus their attention on this with a number ofquestions: What really affects their ability to communicate effectively? How much time/energy do they have to work on language? What are the priorities? I help them to see that it’s notthe grammar that plays the most important part in communication but the lexis.

Showing the communicative power of lexis

Having shown students the limitations of focusing primarily ongrammar on an intensive Business English course, I then showthem what looking at language as lexis means. The model I givestudents is the one presented in the Lexical Approach (wordsand phrases, word partnerships, semi-fixed and fixed expressions); a very clear summary of this that includes examples can be found in the introductory unit to BusinessMatters by Mark Powell (LTP). I then apply this to the languagefeedback we have been doing and start to explore and extendthe lexis with them. It is important to make it clear to students

that this way of working does not exclude grammar (which thentends to be dealt with remedially) but puts it in perspective, theemphasis being firmly on lexis as the communication tool. The key is to show students the difference between these twoareas of language and how they do in fact overlap.

Presenting our teaching approach as a learning tool

My main aims here are to train students in the skills of noticinglexis and chunking written and spoken text, and to show them ways of working on language that they can continue to useindependently after the course. Here are 3 examples of suchactivities that students can see at work in the classroom and takeaway with them:

Noticing lexis in a text

Following work on a reading text, ask students to turn over theirpapers. Write up on the board 7- 10 examples of word partnerships and semi-fixed expressions from the text, but witha key word blanked out in each. Students work together to findappropriate ways of filling the blanks, and you write up all theirsuggestions that would fit. Finally, students check with the textfor the original version. The lexis on the board can then beexplored for other collocations, ways of filling the slots, opposites, etc. Students can then have a chance to experimentwith it. The advantage of this way of working is that it requires nopreparation, and helps students to notice lexis for themselves. Inmy own learning of Turkish I have found that I not only noticeuseful language but that it quickly feeds into my speaking andwriting allowing me to express myself more naturally.

Chunking a written text

Select and copy three or four business news summaries from thepress. Ideally they should be one sentence. The front page of theFinancial Times is a good place to look. Write two of them out ina chunked version and cut them up. In class, divide the studentsinto two groups and give each group one of the cut up textswhich they have to sequence. When students have had a go atthis, hand out the copy for them to check, and focus on the interesting lexis. Then draw students’ attention to the way inwhich you cut up the text and introduce the idea of chunking.Students can then choose one of the other two texts and have ago at chunking it together. You can then go over the principles ofhow to do this with them. In my experience, the main issue is todecide where the prepositions should go; interestingly, they

Learning, Lexis and Business English Nick Hamilton

Nick is a teacher and teacher trainer of General and Business English at International House London. He has taught and trainedteachers in Germany, Turkey, Poland and Lithuania.

come more often at the end of a chunk than at the beginning. If you take the texts off the Internet, it is even easier as you canquickly chunk the texts on computer ready to cut up.

Sound chunking

Record the TV or radio business news headlines. In class, students listen and choose one to work on intensively; using thisas a dictation you then build up the text on the board. You canthen explore with students how it is spoken, i.e. Where do youpause to breathe? Which words are stressed? Which words linktogether? What about weak forms? You can then practise thepronunciation of whole chunks by inviting students to choosefrom the text and compare their way of saying it with yours.

This way of working is essentially the Observe HypothesizeExperiment model (OHE) of the Lexical Approach. I present it tostudents in the variation of Notice Check Experiment (NCE), andback it up by introducing the use of monolingual dictionaries as a means of checking language independently.

Linked to the business of students noticing language for themselves is their ability to ask the right questions to clarify whatthey notice. Once I recognised that the question ‘Why do you saysuch and such?’ is actually asking for confirmation of what to sayin a particular situation, I was able to expand on this and directstudents towards a more useful line of questioning. For example,Is there another way of saying this? Which is most common?What else can I say?

These are questions that I found myself repeatedly asking inIstanbul about what I had seen or heard. It is only when studentsdo this that the language they are learning becomes truly usefuland can be confidently used as a means of self expression.

Building and recording the lexicon

It is clear that when we start working in this way it becomes essential to give students guidance in how to organise the language they are learning. And this needs to be done quite earlyon in the course if it is to be of any practical use. The frameworkI give students is based on Wordflo by Steve Smith andJacqueline Smith (Longman) and encourages them to choose aformat and style for a lexical notebook that they find appropriate.I usually present this on the second day of a course and subsequently point out to students how they might record thelanguage that comes up in the lessons. The choice of a formatseems to work well as it takes into account the different types oflearner; and I have seen the benefits of such a lexical notebookin my own learning of Turkish. About halfway through the coursewe then review and compare the different formats that studentshave come up with. It is important to realise that this (very analytical) approach to organising learning does not suit everyone, and there are always one or two students for whom itis a complete non-starter.

In summary I would say that we need to be advising students onhow to prioritise their learning, raising awareness of what language is, and encouraging effective learning strategies. In myown teaching I want students to take from the course a way oflooking at language and processing it that they have seen iseffective.

‘I want students to takefrom the course a way oflooking at language andprocessing it’.

19

1 Miscellaneous A-Z. Here you put words and phrases thatdon’t fit into the other sections. This can include pronuncia-tion, word class, simple explanation in English or translation,and an example sentence for each one.

1 Topic pages. Here you can record language around specifictopic areas.

1 Fixed expressions. Here you can record semi-fixed andfixed expressions for specific situations.

1 Word partnerships. Here you can record word partnershipsand expressions with very common words, e.g. do, make,get, thing, point, etc. keeping a page for each one. You can also record phrasal verbs in this section, which can then be

cross-referenced to the topic pages.

1 Word building. Here you can note examples of word families (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) that are difficult to useor remember. You can also note the word stress pattern ineach case.

1 Favourite errors. Here you can keep a record of commonerrors that you make. These can be divided into spoken andwritten ones, and you can include common pronunciation problems with sounds and stress patterns.

1 Grammar section. Here you can keep pages of examplesof grammar points that you find especially difficult. These canbe ones that you’ve seen written or heard.

You will need some kind of filing system for this where you can add extra pages to the different sections as you need to. This allowsyou to organise the language as you’re learning it, and makes it much easier to review. Choose a system that suits you.

Recording Language/A Lexical Notebook This can include the following sections:

20

The use of IT as a tool in ELT is coming of age. The last five yearshas seen a rapid assimilation of new technologies into workplaces and home lives. We are now using the tools we marvelled at in science fiction films twenty years ago. The spreadof these technologies, for example email and the World WideWeb, has had the effect that teachers new to the profession havenot just tolerances but expectations of technology applications inELT as much as in any other profession. The use of languagelabs spread as the ownership of cassette recorders amongteachers and students at large increased. The technology itselfhad not improved radically in these years, but acceptance of it inteachers’ personal lives had spread sufficiently. In the UK threeyears ago, many people snorted at the thought of mobile phones(expensive, unnecessary, showy) and are now enthusiastic usersof these (essential, fashionable, convenient) items. The shift hasbeen in how people view them.

Teachers may have started using the Internet (email, the Web,Internet Relay Chat etc) partly as a novelty, to gain advantageover competitors. But the recent growth in usage by both teachers and students has allowed teachers to bring a new toolto their lessons that is an authentic part of their day-to-day life ina way that CD ROMs never were. What seems to happen is this:When an aspect of technology has a use in even a small minority of teachers’ lives outside the classroom, that minority ofteachers will look for practical opportunities to take advantage ofthe technology in the classroom.

To predict the next developments in the implementation of IT inELT reaches the dangerous ground of the crystal ball, but conclusions can be qualified - there is a pattern of development.Firstly, what could these developments be, these developmentswhich, like email and the Web, have become such a vital part ofso many peoples’ lives? They have been talked about fordecades, but it now looks like (mobile) video phones will becomeeconomic realities in the next eighteen months to two years inWestern Europe. Similarly, the introduction of inexpensive, fastInternet connections (eg ADSL at 10-50 times current speeds)will enable real-time high quality video viewing across theInternet. How do these suggestions fit into our theory? Would anEFL teacher with access to these facilities come to see them as‘must-have’s? Who really needs video on a mobile telephone(remember what many of us said about mobile phones in generalthree years ago)? Download an English language film (in seconds) to watch on a PC? Or just watch the channel of yourchoice live? Surely that would delight any ex-pat on a rainySunday afternoon. Homesick? The new fast connections will

allow high-quality video link between you and home. The technology for this is not predicted for some vague time in thefuture. It is available in some countries already and in the UK, forexample, from June 2000. How long for the assimilation in private life to filter into the classroom? Of course, much dependson budget. Few ELT schools can afford a full computer lab orsomeone to run it full-time. However, the expectations of students will inevitably change this over time.

Once a class in one country has video-conferenced with a classin another for the completion of a task, they won’t be particularlyimpressed at the next lesson with being told to pass slips ofpaper to their classroom partner with adverbs of emotion (yetanother time). But we would be in a dreadful nannying situationto insist that we did not want to give students these toolsbecause of the risk of spoiling the students. One day the majority of schools will have these facilities and the ones who arethe first to introduce them well will clearly give themselves anedge in the market in the longer term.

How can a school prepare itself for the cultural shifts among itsstaff and students? There has been a belief that training EFLteachers in IT is a waste of resources. In some respects this is anunderstandable argument. The average contract for an EFLteacher is some nine months, often viewed as an inefficientinvestment. However, basic IT training need not be a protractedprocess and the benefits of basic training may be proportionately greater than that for advanced training anyway.

But why train people for skills that they seem to be acquiring any-way, outside school? The spread of knowledge is dividedsharply. There seems to be a recognition amongst teaching,training and management staff that IT is ‘a good thing’ and ‘weneed more of it’ and ‘we need it now’. This ignorance placesmanagement in a position of weakness, not necessarily becauseof what they can or cannot do with the office PC, but by notbeing aware of what their staff could or could not be doing, howstudents and trainees could or could not be benefiting.

Decisions are often made on very vaguely thought-out arguments. These motivations of ‘good thing’, ‘more’ and ‘now’are replicated in teaching staff for personal and career reasons.And that is where a school can easily, and relatively inexpensively,add value to contracts and the school’s image.

Around all these issues and arguments there remains, in someplaces, a strong ELT prejudice against IT. This also is

Accepting ICT in ELTHoward Ramsay

Howard Ramsay is an educational technologist at International House London. He has taught in Eastern Europe and the UK,most recently developing applications of IT in English Language Teaching. He can be contacted at howard.ramsay@ihlondon.co.uk

understandable. Language teaching is perhaps the most basically human of the professions. The early advocates of CALLwere unable to cut through the voices who shouted that ‘a computer was never going to be able to do my job!’. Yet this isnot what the early advocates were saying. The new technologies were just more tools for the teacher. Perhaps eventhe word ‘technology’ has been to blame for this prejudice.

Teachers should not be encouraged to use a wider variety oftechnology but a wider variety of tools. The arrival of the, tomany, enigma of computer exercises and CD ROMS was frightening. They had little or no experience of such things in theirown lives. That which they knew was second-hand. Now, however, the tools at our disposal in the classroom can be thetools we use in our private lives. The tools are valuable. IT in ELThas come of age.

21

All the statements are true! IH is a big busy place with a great deal happening in the class-room and out. Disadvantages of working here include the Londoners’ habit of digging up Piccadilly whenever they get bored; advantages include working in oneof the most elegant buildings in Mayfair.

IH LONDON. 106 PICCADILLYThe blur is a bus - on the whole the building does not normally move !

Answers to IH London quiz:

22

Picture One

Its early April and I’m reading the IH TT brochure. I skip anythingthat’s not in July and costs over 500 pounds. Not very muchchoice. It has to be Current Trends. Sounds very good becauseI’ve reached the point in my T life-cycle where I need to be reassured or increase my confidence by seeing that others holdsimilar beliefs or teach in similar ways - a line which I find a fewmonths later in Martin Parrott’s handout. But it’s still April and tooearly yet to get terribly reassured about Am I current enough?Anyway reading the copy in brochures is like reading publishers’catalogues.Take the titles out and you won’t be able to tell CuttingEdge from Chatterbox. A slight exaggeration perhaps but theremust be some truth in it. Every course is so carefully graded, flexible, task-based, learner-centred and of course easy to teachfrom. Can teaching ever be easy?

Picture Two

Arrival. The centre of London is a theme park - a line I hear in atheatre play a few days later. Makes me want to run away. Am Itired of living? Fun! Have fun! Let’s have fun! Lessons should befun! We talk about it during one of Rodney’s sessions. The session is fun although strangely enough Rodney doesn’t putMickey Mouse ears on. Someone suggests that a book of Irishjokes could solve the problem.

Picture Three

Martin begins his session with a joke about a lecture on groupwork. Nobody laughs. That’s the joke, says Martin. Silence.He repeats the joke.

Picture Four

Tate Gallery. I walk round a room and look at Turner’s paintings.My friend walks in the opposite direction and also looks at the pictures. We study the paintings carefully. After completing ourcircles we meet where we started. We look at each other smileand say: You tell me first. Two non-nests of two different nationalities playing a game called ‘Let me guess your favouritepicture in this room.’ We are delighted if we happen to choose thesame picture and we frown if we can’t guess. Then we go to anext room and do the same. A task-based visit to a gallery.Pairwork. Student-generated because we invented the gameourselves. Real fun. But I wouldn’t necessarily like toplay this game with a stranger or if somebody told me to play it. I

can still easily describe the paintings in detail.

Picture Five

Just another course day. It’s 10 30. Time for a smoke. It damagesyour health, I know. Hearing included? I’m having a conversationwith one of the colleagues from the course. I can’t understand aword. We are both teachers of English. In one of his sessions,Rodney says that non-native English may be a better kind ofEnglish than native. The videoed Peter Medgyes talks about NESTvs. NON-NEST. NON-NEST is good! Is the story of English goingto be the same as the story of Latin? Rodney gives a mini lessonin Italian to illustrate the PPP principle. Wouldn’t I rather have anItalian teacher to teach me Italian? Wouldn’t Rodney? NON-NEST....I’m one of them, but non mi piace.

Picture Six

It’s August 1st. Heathrow Airport. I’m waiting for a plane to take meback to Warsaw. A little boy comes up to me and asks in English:`Excuse me. What time is it?’I look at my watch. `Eight twenty five’ The boy turns to his mother and says`Mamo, dopiero dwadziescia piec po osmej! Mamy duzo czasu’.That Polish sentence means ‘It’s only 8 25, Mum. We’ve got plentyof time.’I never say to the boy I’m Polish too. He’s so proud of himself. Hismother smiles at him.

Picture Seven

A weekend in Liverpool. A bit nostalgic but exciting. The Beatlesand all the rest. But Liverpool can be depressing. And it’s not justthe derelict buildings. On Monday I tell Rodney I went to Liverpooland completely lost my confidence in English. It’s their accent. AndI never learned that you could call a train conductor darling.Rodney’s answer is Don t worry. I would understand about 7O%.Pigs might fly, NEST, but thank you for your supportive comment.

You’ve heard so many foreign people speaking your language(because it is YOUR language). How did they sound? I’ve heardsome foreign people speaking my language. They had very interesting stories to tell but it wasn’t REAL. My words, phrases orsentences were not exactly their words, phrases or sentences.

Although the sounds may have been quite similar, the meaningwas different. Think of a simple word like sandwich. Or think how

Twelve unprincipled eclectic picturesKrzysztof DabrowskiKrzystof took a Current Trends course at IH London in 1998 and subsequently wrote this original and entertaining view of life asa trainee at 106 Piccadilly. Having entered it for our annual competition, which is open to all trainee teachers, he won a free courseat IH London.

ridiculous “How are you?” must sound to a Polish ear. Is Englishwithout “How are you?” still English? Is English without its culture stillEnglish? We can’t solve that problem. And anyway I’ve seen somevery bad NESTS and some very bad NON-NESTS. And some verygood ones too. Both.

Picture Eight

It `s so nice to escape from the theme park and walk into theLyric theatre. I’m watching a play called Closer. I understand99% of it. I am able to help a friend with a few lines. Tangledhuman relationships are intercultural. I’m enjoying it enormouslyand I laugh at the jokes, my response time being only 0.5 seconds worse than that of the London audience. I’m so excited that I miss a few lines completely. Great! After the playthe friend asks Why is the play called Closer? I don’t know.

Back home I look up all the 23 meanings of ‘close’ and still can’tanswer the question. ‘Let’s not worry about labels’, the friendalmost regrets she ever asked that question `You can still be avery good teacher without knowing what principled eclecticism iscan’t you?’ Can I?

Picture Nine

Things we do for love. Another play, another title. Clearer than Closer.Jane Asher. Very good acting. Ayckbourn should be recommended to all NON-NESTS even at a price of perhaps causingsome NESTS to smile a that-is-a -bit-middlebrow smile. Many yearsago, Jane Asher was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend. That was evenbefore I became a teacher. Ages ago!

Current trends in acting. Has she ever attended a course like that?Has she read many books on the theory and practice of acting? At themoment she’s simply doing a very good job in this play. I rememberher in a film, an early-seventies story directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, aPolish emigre to the UK. She was good too. I must see that movieagain and compare. Teaching is very much like acting, isn’t it?

Picture Ten

Whistle Down The Wind. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Not at his best butit’s unmistakably him. One of the catchy tunes is called When ChildrenRule the World. The musical is a fairy tale in which children protect a criminal who they take for Jesus Christ, from the evilhearts and deeds of the adult population of a small American town.But good musicals must be fairy tales. Learner autonomy. Aren’t we creating another fairy tale? A lesson isn’t a musical, is it? And how many of us are Andrew LloydWebbers of the classroom? I believe Rodney would agree, though hemight not say it.

Picture Eleven

I’m in a hotel room. There’s nothing better to do at the moment,so I’m reading the Customer Comment Card. Please rate your

overall experience on a scale of zero to nine where 0 = Very disappointing and 9 = Excellent, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I’mthinkingabout some possible differences between 5 and 6 Can’tthink of any. Even between 5 and 7. What has to happen so wantto circle 1? I put the card away and never fill it in.

Picture Twelve

I’m on a plane to Warsaw. Between some fierce turbulence perods I’m trying to read the rules of the International HouseTeacher Training Competition 1998. The ways in which yourcourse this year has helped you as a teacher. I had wanted to bereassured or increase my confidence by seeing that others holdsimilar beliefs. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen in the age ofprincipled eclecticism. I can’t just circle a number or even explainin words. Sorry l know I’m useless. And it’s not just because I’ma NON-NEST. It’s because there’s a world of difference betweendeveloping a film (How many pictures were OK?) and developingas a teacher (On a scale of zero to nine Nonsense!) So myanswer to your question is Well done, IH! I am more confidentnow that real life is CLOSER to teaching than it may seem. Thereare analogies to discover between teaching and ... a play, aweekend trip, a visit to a gallery or a simple scene at HeathrowAirport. Maybe that’s how we become better teachers: by making discoveries about real life. You helped me in that. So Ithink we did a good job.

We painted twelve unprincipled eclectic pictures together. Thankyou. Now you must decide what the pictures are really worth. Soplease rate your overall impression on a scale of zero to nine.

23

‘Maybe that’s how webecome better teachers: by makingdiscoveries about real life.’

24

If you are in your mid-thirties, you may remember R.S.A. readingcards from your time at primary school. We did! Or at least weremembered the concept and this then was the inspirationbehind our idea of “The Colour Cards”.

We had been looking for something to complete the “missing element” in the Young L.earner course we were designing. Whatwe were looking for was something to fulfil the following requirements:

1 A series of tasks with standardised grading in terms of difficulty2 A means by which to code these tasks and therefore indicate thelevel of ability and amount of progress made3 An aspect of self access or at least a degree of decision makingby the student as to what s/he particularly wants or needs to study.Two key words came up from our memories of these particularcards: COLOUR and CARDS!

• T.L. = target language

Despite our attempts to come up with something witty, original,catchy or clever for our new system, we couldn’t.

And so “The Colour Cards” were born.

How does it work in practice? The Colour card system consistsof a sturdy box containing all the work cards divided into theirseparate categories (within each category the cards are orderedin terms of difficulty; i.e. from yellow to gold). It’s important tonote that there should be duplicates, of the lower level cards atleast, so that more than one’ student can work on the same cardat the same time. Each student should have his or her own specific answer bookespecially for using with the cards and it should have a recordsheet in the back to record progress.

An Idea is Born...Carol Crombie and Carol Dowie

Carol and Carol worked together at IH Viseu where they developed this interesting and highly motivating system for helpingyoung learners to read.

Colour Brief Guidelines Possible Exercise Types

Yellow Recognition only Ordering T.L. given Matching T.L. words to picturesT.L. appears in isolation/ Grouping exercisessemi-isolation (word level) Drawing

Orange Production of T.L Writing the word for the pictureT.L. produced in isolation Simple transformation (positive - negative)not in sentences Anagrams

Blue Production of T.L. Complete the gapped sentencesT.L. in sentence level Answer simple questions about a picture

Match T.L. to mini-situations

Silver Production of T.L. only Short text - complete the sentencesT.L. is in short text (which may Short text and matchinginclude language beyond Short text and add T.L.production level)

Gold Production of T.L. in a short text. Writing a short textMay also include production of Completing a short textlanguage not taught, but within their Error correction of short textpool of knowledge.

In class the teacher gives out student books and put the box ofcards and coloured pens or pencils in the middle of the room.The students then go to the box and select the card they wantto work on. The teacher should be available to help the studentselect appropriately in keeping with the grading.

This is essential at first when students need reminding of theorder of colours.The students work individually and write the answers in their cardbooks.

When a student has finished, the task is marked by the teacher.We found that some sort of system is required for this correctionperiod. The one we use is as follows: Students finish, then writetheir name on the board in order, and then wait their turn formarking. During this time they can select the next card. As themajority of cards can be marked quickly, they generally don’thave to wait long, and the fact that they can do something in themeantime reduces the chaos caused by the “FINISHED!” crowd.

Once the student’s card has been corrected, there are threepossibilitiesi) If there are any errors, the student goes back and tries again;ii) If the card is correct, the student colours in the appropriate boxon the record sheet and continues with the next card;iii) If the student has unsuccessfully attempted the same card acouple of times, the teacher can advise him to try a different category and return to this one later after doing somestudy or revision.

The student then chooses another card according to the gradingsystem.At the end of the allocated time, students return all the cards tothe box and the teacher collects all the answer books. any outstanding corrections can be done by the teacher before thenext session.

Example Cards:

SHOPPING

Yellow

Look at the prices below and match them to the correct words.

Example: £5 ———— five pounds

£4.99 twenty-five pence

£6.30 seventy-nine pounds

twenty-five

25p six pounds thirty

£68.50 one pound eighty

£1.80 eighty-eight pence

£79.25 sixty-eight pounds fifty

88p our pounds ninety-nine

SHOPPING

Orange

Divide the items in the shop into 2 different groups.

“How much is......? “How much are......?Example... the sweater Example....the trousers

SHOPPING

Blue

Match the questions to the correct answers

Example:

1) How much are the jeans? Yes please2) Can I help you? They’re £32

1) What colour do you want? a) Yes, it is...it’s £1982) What size are you? b) They’re £5.993) How much are they? c) Yes. We’ve got lots.4) How much is it? d) It’s £205) Have you got any sweaters? e) I’m medium6) Is it expensive? f) I want small please7) Do you want small or medium? g) I want red please.

The cards have been in use now for two and a half years. They are still proving to be very popular with each new group of students and extremely motivating. Obviously there are still theodd couple of students in each class who don’t like writing ordoing exercises, but at least the cards seem to be slightly moreacceptable to them than pages in an exercise book. On thewhole the children tend to look forward to the “cards sessions”as they like to see their progress.

Interestingly enough, they have developed two distinct ways ofworking through them: the more able try and work through all thecolours and get to Gold in each one; The less able work throughthe yellow in each set, followed by the orange in each set, thenthe blue, etc. These are, of course, the easier cards. However,this means that both groups of students may in fact completethe same number of cards in one session. We have found thatthis in particular is motivating to the less ablestudents who feel that they have achieved the same as the others.

25

the exercise

books

the knickers

the hamburger

the blouse

the radio

the pencil case

the chewing gum

the tights

the socks

the rubber

the jeans

the dress

the computer

the CD

The students tend to pick which category they would like to workon for a whole host of reasons. This may be due to their interestor what they find easy and therefore will have more chance ofsuccess. However, there is a third group of students who do,with slight prompting, recognise that they need more practice ina particular function or lexical set and will choose this to work on.It’s very satisfying to see that some students go home and studysomething they had problems with so that in the next “cardssession” they can get onto the next colour level.

‘It’s a great opportunityfor the teacher to be ableto give some individualtime to each student’.These sessions have provided short periods of intensive individualwork on the part of the students. It has to be said, though, thatit is also quite intensive for the teacher. However, when a set system has been introduced and the students start workingindependently, .It’s a great opportunity for the teacher to be ableto give some individual time to each student, even if it’s just toadmire the picture they have drawn and to praise them. It alsogives a very clear picture of the progress each student is making.One look at the child’s record sheet will show if he is able to copewith the text production level, etc.

As we chose to use a younger learners’ book which did notplace a huge emphasis on making grammar explicit, the cardsproved to be a useful supplement for the students who liked orneeded rules and clear guidelines and exercises to help consolidate the concepts they were learning.

After using the cards for some time we realised that the less ablestudents who never progressed past “blue” weren’t gettingenough text level input, especially in writing. We have since hadto instruct teachers that they must supplement the course withbasic writing skills which were not being covered in the cards atthe lower level colours.

We have found it hugely satisfying to see that in general thecards seem to have been and continue to be a success withboth students and teachers alike.

Despite our attempts at approaching publishers, there seems tobe a reluctance to undertake any project which is not bookbased. If there is anybody out there in the publishing world whoagrees with us that it seems like a good idea, you know who toget in touch with!

26

27

Teaching low levels can be extremely rewarding as both studentsand teachers feel they progress very quickly. Each piece of language the students acquire improves their ability to communicate almost quantitatively. However, it is sometimes difficult to know where to start - how can the teacher decidewhat is most useful for the student when everything seems to be useful? The obvious answer is to look to the coursebook for a graded syllabus that will give the students a sense of progresswith sufficient focus and control. When looking in coursebooks,however, it is still often the case that the basis of each unit is agrammatical structure and the vocabulary input is supplementary. Students at this level clearly need grammar, butwhat use is knowledge of grammatical structures without thelexis to make those structures meaningful?

What low levels need

When I started teaching beginners and elementary students onintensive courses, I found that the needs of my students were tobe able to communicate from day one and to learn fast. Theirlanguage was very limited, but not their intellect, so they wantedtopics to discuss that were relevant to them and stimulating.Secondly, they needed language in chunks to help them buildtheir ideas into meaningful utterances. They needed controlledpractice in the language areas, to help them familiarise themselves with the structures and sounds of the language.Finally, they wanted to be given the opportunity to take risks andfurther develop language in an individualised way.

Considerations for lesson planning

Bearing these needs in mind, I found that when planning lessons,it is useful first of all to think of a topic rather than a languagearea. It is then possible to predict what students might want tosay about the topic. For example, if the topic is work, studentsmay want to talk about their own jobs and what it involves andask other students about their jobs. This simple exchange ofinformation has the benefit of being limited enough to make itfeasible to predict useful language, but wide enough to enablethe students to individualise the language studied.

Designing a model

The next step is to think of some kind of model for the studentsto work from and analyse. In this case, it might be in the form ofan interview between two people with interesting jobs. This canbe recorded by English language speakers, keeping the level ofthe language clear and simple, but without sacrificing authenticity. A tape-script of the recording is a time-consuming

but valuable extra tool for the teacher, as it gives students a written record of the language that has been analysed.

There are two reasons why models are useful for students. Firstof all, it provides a ‘natural’ context for the language that is to bestudied, and secondly, it gives the students something concreteto work from or copy when they come to produce language oftheir own.

Choosing language

The next thing to do is choose chunks of language or basicstructures that will be useful for the students and to limit thenumber of these to a manageable level. Analysing the languageused in the model, as you would do in a task-based approach,will usually reveal a rich variety of language to select from. The key here is to choose the areas that will have the widest coverage for students at this level, and to avoid overloadingthem. It is as much a matter of what to leave out as what toinclude. Suggested language areas to focus on from the modelmight include verb and noun collocations: e.g. answer the telephone/meet clients/ work on acomputer/write reports/arrange meetings/sell a product etc. Another area that might occur is phrases for times:e.g. in the morning, after lunch, in the afternoon, in the evening. Finally the students will need to know how to formulate questionsto find out about their partners:

e.g What do you do in the morning?Do you use a computer?What about you?

Designing the lesson stages

Once the language content is decided, the input needs to beinterspersed with practice and speaking, to avoid overloadingthe students and checked carefully for difficulty. An example lesson plan could be as follows:

• Students identify various simple job categories e.g. sales,accountancy, law, etc. and say what their job is.• Students match verb and noun collocations.• Students in pairs say which activities are associated with eachjob, and which ones they typically do.• Students put the time phrases on a chart to show the order inwhich they happen in the day.• Students look at the verb and noun collocations again and sayat what time of day they usually do these activities.• Students listen to a recording of two people talking about jobs

Giving Low Levels a Free ReinJo CookeJo is a teacher trainer at IH london. She has taught in various countries, including Greece, Germany and the Czech Republic.

and identify the jobs mentioned and what they do.• Students listen again and write down any questions that theyhear. (repeated as many times as necessary)• The teacher focuses on the basic question forms with the students.• Students practise saying the questions, paying careful attention to the intonation of the questions.

These stages are very controlled and break up the language intolittle sections, each one being tried out as soon as it is introduced.

The task

The next stage of the lesson, the task stage, is much less controlled, i.e.• Students in new pairs talk about their jobs and ask about theirpartner’s job.

What tends to happen here is that students start using the language given during the input stage in a rather mechanicalway. If the topic is sufficiently personal and motivating to them,however, they will try to really explain what they do in their joband then find they do not have sufficient language to expressthemselves. At this point the teacher’s role is to encourage oreven push the student to take risks and feed in the language thatthey need to communicate with. This is the language that is reallyuseful for the student at that moment and this is what they willbe motivated to remember.

After the task and feedback the students can focus on the newlexis or structure together and practise as necessary.

Advantages and disadvantages

I found that once the students became familiar with the idea ofasking for information and language, the complexity and varietyof language that the students produced increased dramatically.Most of the time it was not accurate, but continual reformulationof their mistakes every time they occurred meant that the students’ language gradually became more accurate as well.

This approach works best with small classes as individualisedlanguage input takes time. However, it can be difficult for theteacher, for three reasons. First of all, the teacher needs to be onhis/her toes all the time, and be able to clarify and teach new language without previous preparation. Secondly, this lack ofcontrol can cause anxiety in teachers, as they feel they ought tocontrol all stages of the lesson, especially with low levels. Finally,the students themselves may well have some initial resistance tothis approach to learning, and it is the responsibility of theteacher to draw attention to the benefits of the learning process.For example, a traditional gap-fill exercise revising the languagestudied the day before can be used to convince students thatthey have learned something.

Why do it this way?

• There is no pedagogical reason why the teacher should alwayscontrol the amount of language that the students produce. • The language that the students need at that moment is the language that they will ask for, and be motivated to remember.• Students like talking about adult topics and about themselves. • Students learn language in context.• Students have the opportunity to take risks with the language, thereby increasing the potential complexity of theirlanguage.• The lessons are more student-directed.• Students practise communicating difficult concepts with limitedlanguage in a safe and controlled atmosphere.

Conclusion

Imagine that your students are horses. Being on a tight rein allthe time is very frustrating, constraining and doesn’t allow thehorse to use its full potential. Giving the horse free rein is moredangerous - it can fall, stumble and injure itself, but it also has thefreedom to gallop, enjoy itself and exercise all of its muscles. (toonaff - what do you think? I want to work the image in somewherebut maybe this is too much. Advice please!

28

29

Assuming teachers are familiar with the mechanics of www use,what can we do to ‘enable’ them to use it as effectively as anyother teaching tool at their disposal? In this article I’d like todescribe how we helped teachers at IH Viseu to explore the relationship between their learning aims and the www, and todiscover how the Web can be an integrated part of a course.

IH Viseu is a medium-sized school with approximately 780 learners, 84% of whom are aged under 18. There are elevenmembers of the English teaching staff, including a Director ofStudies and a Senior Teacher.

There is a computer room with eight work-stations available forindividual use by teachers and for classtime use with learners. It has one black and white and two colour printers, and a scanner.

During the academic year, 1998/9, all the teachers at IH Viseudid some computer work with learners. This was principally withword processing and CD Roms. Some teachers also usedGapmaster, Matchmaster and Fun with Texts programmes, andthe www. Most Internet use, however, was generally personalwith the majority of time on-line being spent on the sending andreading of e-mail.

By the beginning of the academic year 1999/2000, teacherswere at a point where they could handle the technology but wereunsure about the methodology of the Internet. As one teachercommented, “I have no idea how to use chat rooms or Internetwith students. I feel I don’t use it to its full potential.” Of the tenteachers, five teachers had had no experience of using theInternet at all in the EFL classroom and only two teachers hadused it with children under 13 - an age group accounting for 43%of students. The main learning aims of computer usage werestated as being the development of grammar, vocabulary andwriting abilities. They wanted to know how they could make the

most of the technology to fulfil learning aims. Should the Internetbe used as a resource bank, a ‘treat’ for learners, or can it beintegrated into the courses?

Accordingly our aims were, first, to help teachers answer the howand why questions they posed about using the Internet and enablethem to start integrating it in a ‘considered’ way into their day to dayteaching; and secondly, to do this as part of a long-term developmental process involving teacher reflection, where teacherscould set their own targets and work towards meeting them.As a first stage in meeting the above aims, four input sessionswere held highlighting possible connections between regularteaching practice and the Internet, and Internet use with students was encouraged over a two-month period. After reflecting on the input sessions and Internet classes, teacherscould then take this initial development further by requesting further support in terms of lesson planning, team teaching orobservations, or by becoming involved in a programme of ‘actionresearch’ if they wished. Input sessions covered the why andhow of using the www, young learners and the Internet, and e-pals.

‘input sessions were heldhighlighting possible connections between regular teaching practiceand the Internet’.The aims of the first input session were to help answer the howand why questions posed by teachers showing that the WWWcould be used like any other teaching tool. The session was anadapted version of a session plan devised by Greg Selby‘Integrating the www into Language Course Delivery: Teaching theTeachers’ IATEFL CALL Review November 1998 pp10-14. Selbysees a need for a “principled, and above all, integrated, use of theweb resource in the computer room as a tool to facilitate language instruction in the classroom, alongside other such toolsas cassette players, VCRs, paper handouts, realia - magazines,newspaper articles and the like - and (lest we forget!) the whiteboard” (Selby 1998:11)

The following table shows how the input sessions were structured and how this structure was linked to the aim of each session.

The www: Putting the methodology into the technology Karen Momber

Karen used to work in IH Taragona and is currently the DOS at IH Viseu.

‘The main learning aimsof computer usage werestated as being thedevelopment of grammar, vocabularyand writing abilities.’

30

Session stage

Small group discussion - what can we use the Web for in terms of language teaching outcomes? Open group feedback.

Small group discussion- if we can achieve those learning outcomes through other means, why use the Web at all?

OHT1 - mind map of www advantages over other teachingresources. Add group suggestions to it.

OHT2- three ways of using the Web in ELT.

Focus on first use - the Web as a materials resource. Teachers,grouped in pairs at computers, go into the website:http://www.its-online.com Following instructions they look up ‘How to write a love poem’.Then spend a short time exploring the site and discussing, in twogroups, what they would select for classroom use. Suggest othersites appropriate for use as a material resource e.g.http://www.lyrics.ch/

Focus on second use - one-off lessons on the Web. Again, inpairs, teachers go into http://www.guardian.co.ukFollowing instructions they look up ‘notes and queries’ and listento a suggestion for exploiting it as a one-off computer-based lesson. The lesson involves learners selecting a problem in the‘notes and queries’ section, brainstorming possible solutions,checking answers sent in by readers and then possibly e-mailingin their suggested answer. Again, pairs then have a short time tofurther explore the site and discuss how they could exploit thematerial.

Focus on third use - integrated use of the Web. Teachers go intothe website: http://www.lonely planet.com,go to ‘destinations’,select a country in pairs, explore the information about that country and then feedback how it could beused to teach or practise language.

Handout table of suggested uses (Selby 1998:13/14). Focus onthe three lesson stages which result in integrative use.

Split teachers into two groups. One group looks up:http://www.royal.gov.uk the other one: http://www.white-house.gov Pairs fill in the blank chart with their ideas for exploiting the site and then feedback as an open group

Aim

To encourage teachers to make connections between theInternet and other teaching resources they use, and Small group discussion......also to consider what advantages the Web might have over othermeans, depending on desired learning outcomes.

To highlight the distinction between using the www as a resource,for one-off lessons and integrated use.

To introduce teachers to some useful websites, showing how certain materials are more appropriately exploited off-line, and todemonstrate the ease in accessing and printing out materials andthe topicality of what is available. Then to give teachers an opportunity to think what materials they could choose to exploitand how.

To show an example of material that is suitable for one-off les-sons, and give an example of how it can be exploited to provide challenging, skills-based on-line work. Then, again, to give teachers an opportunity to think how they could exploit materialsfrom newspapers for one-off one-line classes.

To show how the www can be used as an integrated part of a les-son to meet a variety of learning aims, focussing on pre- and post- computer room work, thus making connectionsbetween standard classroom practice when exploiting any texttype.

Going through the planning process further consolidates the ideaof integrative use. The framework and small group formats giveteachers an opportunity to identify appropriate learning aims andconsider ways of meeting those aims through pre-, Web, andpost-www stages.

31

By December 1999• All teachers had used the www for their students. • 5 teachers had used it with under 13s.• Teachers identified a change in their main learning aims - reading, information collecting, writing and speaking all becomekey focuses.• Teachers generally felt progress had been made in 2 principalareas: their efficiency in selecting materials, and using the Webwith a purpose.• Areas teachers were keen to develop further were, for thosewho gained most confidence with the Web, in the area of classroom management.For others it was extending use to a younger age range.For the least confident group it was making time to search forand adapt materials.• All teachers discussed ways of making progress in these areasover the next two months.A file was created at IH Viseu for teachers to put www plans in,and also to make a note of any useful websites with recommendations of book tie-ins, level etc.

This is how we did it at Viseu; now you have seen how easy itwas, galvanise your school into action on-line!

POISIT

ION O

NLY

When I was learning Portuguese I found that I learnt a lot ofvocabulary and grammatical structures by listening to peopleusing the language and by asking questions about the languagewhich I was unsure about. Unfortunately, I could not do this asmuch as I would have liked because I couldn’t really interruptpeople mid-flow to ask about the intricacies of thelanguage being used. Consequently I decided to encourage mystudents to ask questions about the language they heard onrecorded materials or from me in the classroom. I started torecord myself in the classroom so that students could listen tome speaking naturally and then they could listen to the recordedversion to work on the language. I have had a very positiveresponse from my students to this technique and now I findmyself using my own voice, or that of colleagues, as much as Iuse pre-recorded course book materials.

What are the advantages of using your ownvoice?

• I’ve found that students are much more motivated when I tellthem a story or something that has happened to me or friends ofmine than when I press ‘Play’ on the tape recorder and they hearthe theme tune to the next unit in their course book.• Students have the advantage of being able to watch my bodylanguage which assists comprehension. • Students listen to natural language rather than actors on pre-recorded tapes.• I can choose the language I want to include.• I can grade the speed and level of the language I use by watching the students’ expressions to see whether they are following me or not.• I don’t need to spend hours searching for appropriatelistening material and, better still, I don’t have to cue the tape. • I use my topic as a model for the students (more detail givenlater).• I can use it with all levels of students

The structure of a lesson

The general structure of lessons using this method is as follows:

1 Introduce the topic.2 Tell students a story, an anecdote or give a description, whichincludes the target language depending on your syllabus needs.Record it at the same time. The recording should not exceed 4minutes.3 Ask the students to take notes and then orally summarise thecontent with a partner.

4 Play the tape. 5 Extract the target language from the recording by stopping thetape at the appropriate moment and asking the students to repeatwhat was said.6 Provide controlled practice of the target language. For example, a gap fill exercise.7 Give students 5/10 minutes to prepare a talk about their ownpersonal experience, tell a story or give a description using myrecorded text as a model. The teacher helps when necessary.8 Students give the talk to their group.9 Teacher listens and provides feedback on the language used.

I have found that my students are happier to listen for the generalgist of what I have said when they know that they will be given theopportunity to question the language they are unsure about later.It is important that they are motivated enough by the content toenjoy summarising it afterwards. At that point I am able to checktheir level of comprehension and use of the target language. I havefound that students enjoy extracting the target language as thecontext is very clear so they can see how the language is used naturally. They then have the opportunity to practise using the language in a similar context which is personal to them. The purpose of giving the students 5 to 10 minutes preparation time isto encourage them to think about using the target language in theirown story and to experiment with the language before speaking.

Using this technique

A teacher can use this technique for a variety of purposes such asteaching vocabulary, grammar or functional language.

a. Teaching vocabulary

I teach lexical sets of vocabulary by talking about something whichinvolves using the target language. I think about the topic I want totalk about and then rehearse the story so that I know which vocabulary comes up. For example, I recently wanted to teachsome phrasal verbs related to shopping to a class of intermediatestudents so I thought about an unsuccessful shopping trip I hadbeen on and noted down the phrasal verbs I needed to tell thestory. I then went into the classroom with the key words in mynotebook so that I could remember what I wanted to say. I askedthe students to summarise my story which they did successfullybut with a limited range of language. We then extracted from thetape the verbs I had used and checked the meaning. After somecontrolled practice activities I asked them to tell each other abouta good or bad shopping experience they had had using as manyof the new verbs as possible.

32

Listening - Skills development or something more? Carina Lewis

Carina is a teacher and trainer of foreign teachers at International House London. She is currently writing an Elementary LevelCoursebook for Addison Wesley Longman.

b. Teaching Grammar

I will sometimes teach grammar in a similar manner. For example,I have taught narrative tenses by telling the students about a memorable holiday experience. We then extracted the target language and I elicited the reason for using each of the tenses. Thestudents then had to decide which tense to use in a gapped textabout a holiday to provide them with some controlled practicebefore moving into free speaking. After giving them preparationtime I asked the students to tell their group about a memorableholiday experience they had had. Sometimes I show them thegrammar in a more traditional way first and then use this methodto put the language in context so that the students can see howto use it in a realistic situation.

c. Teaching Functional Language

To teach functional language I sometimes work with two teachersin the classroom as the students have the opportunity to watchand listen to two people interact in English and use spoken discourse markers in a natural way.

For example, I taught a group of Late Intermediate students language for expressing an opinion, i.e. If you ask me ....., andexpressing agreement with an opinion, i.e. Yeah, it is, isn’t it?. We asked the students to choose topics they wanted us to talkabout and write them on slips of paper. We then picked one of thetopics and asked the students to take notes on the general content. We split the class into two groups and they listened again.Group A had to listen for language we had used to express opinions and Group B had to listen for language we used toexpress agreement.

We elicited the language from the groups onto the board. Aftersome controlled practice, we asked them to work in groups offour, pick a topic to discuss and try to use as much of the targetlanguage as possible. If it is not possible to invite another Englishspeaker into the classroom then you could record the dialogueonto a tape before the lesson.

In conclusion, I have found that these output-driven procedures tolistening have had a positive response from my students. Theyhave learnt to determine the difference between listening for gistand using listening as a model to help develop their speaking skills.It is enjoyable, flexible to most language areas, productive, timeefficient and provides variety in the language classroom.

33

1 IH London has three, five-storey buildings.

2 We have 26 full-time teacher trainers and only one of them isAmerican.

3 Over 300 individuals/institutions are members of our Teachers’Centre.

4 We offer an MSc in conjunction with Aston University.

5 We offer 18 different teacher training courses in addition to theCambridge/RSA CELTA and DELTA.

6 We run approximately 40 CELTA courses each year.

7 We offer teacher training courses in Spanish, French, German,Italian and Japanese (as well as in English).

8 We employ approximately 35 teachers of languages other thanEnglish.

9 You can only smoke in one of our 6 staffrooms.

10 The BEBC Bookshop is situated in our 106 Piccadilly building.

11 Our Executive Centre also offers Teacher Training courses forteachers of English-for business purposes.

12 Our HR department recruits between 300 and 500 teachersfor affiliated schools each year.

13 One of our 5 Directors of Studies writes poetry in his free time and another sings in a choir

14 Tom Wilmott has run the IH Restaurant and bar for 16 years.

15 We run cheap courses for refugees from all over the world

16 106 Piccadilly was decorated by an 18th century paintercalled Angelica Kauffman

17 We have over 10,000 books in our library

18 Our social programme includes visits to the Houses ofParliament and to Brixton Police Station.

19 The Queen is one of our closest neighbours.

20 Hugh Grant’s mother and Gianfranco Zola’s wife have bothstudied here.

34

True False

IH London A Profile by Roger Hunt (DOSTT)I was surprised on a recent visit to two affiliated schools in Spain by how little many of the teachers knew about IH London. Put thatsurprise together with a request from our new Journal Editors to write something about IH London and here it is. However, ratherthan just tell you, I thought I’d set a quiz - here it is. How much do you know about IH London?

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

True False

Answers to the above on P.21 (NB We know that people working in IH Worldwide would like to know more about your school.Send us 200/300 words in any format you like telling us all about who’s who, what’s what and where’s where. Eds.)

35

Innovation and Best Practice edited by Chris Kennedy.

Innovation and Best Practice comprises articles which focus oninnovations and current changes in the ELT classroom and discuss whether these changes, taking place within the microcosm that is the classroom, actually reflect the externalsocio- economic, technological and financial changes in the realworld. The authors try to introduce methods (the ‘best practice’of the title) of bridging the gap between the chaos of the realworld and the sometimes artificial practices of the languageteacher in the ELT classroom.

The articles are stimulating, topical and thoroughly researched.Particularly interesting is the investigation of the difficultiesInherent in innovation. A salient case in point is the the areaof studying an academic subject in English, which is becomingmore and more commonplace. In his article John Clegg exploresthe problems the ESL student encounters when using English asa medium for studying an academic subject (both at school andat university). This kind of immersion in English is a good idea intheory, but Clegg asks whether in practice the student simplyends up with an unsatisfactory understanding of both the subjectand the English language. The book also reports (from the BritishCouncil in Beijing) some success stories like the DistanceTraining Programme in China, which has helped to retrain Englishteachers in a more contemporary, student-centred and essentially Western methodology. Economic and sociologicalchanges in China have necessitated these important changes inthe Chinese classroom.

This collection of articles is stimulating and would be suitable forthe high-flying DELTA trainee. However, it is by no means an easyread. Innovation and Best Practice is more palatable in smalldoses. Don’t try and swallow it whole! (Jayne West)

Business Builder intermediate Teacher’s Resource Scriesby Paul Emmerson. Macmillan Heinemann 1999

This is the series Business English teachers have been waitingfor, especially in the IH London Executive Centre, where thematerial was piloted over a number of years. The three books area resource bank of photocopiable worksheets with accompanying notes for the teacher on the standard range ofbusiness communication skill taught at intermediate level and above, such as meetings, presentations and telephoning. Each skill is covered in a module which focuses on differentaspects of key language and then goes on to provide a variety ofpractice activity frameworks for both pair- and group work. The

three books in the series each include three modules, allowingyou to pick and choose according to the needs of your students;a needs analysis form is provided at the beginning of each book.

The great attraction of this material is its user-friendly presentation and the fact that most lessons could be built arounda single photocopy. While clearly aimed at the Business Englishmarket, a lot of this material would be equally accessible toGeneral English students for developing spoken fluency anddealing with work-related topics; the module on Job Interviewswould surely be of interest to most students.

As with all material presented in a modular format, certain thingstend to jump out at you more than others, and everyone findstheir own favourites. Great to dip into. (Nick Hamilton)

Drama with Children by Sarah Phillips. OUP 1999

This is a useful resource book, which aims to help both experienced and inexperienced teachers to develop drama as anextra dimension for practising language in the classroom. It actsas a very practical introduction to drama for teachers who’venever dared to use it before. The activities create realistic simulations of everyday situations, giving children the opportunityfor natural language practice. The book is user-friendly in that itindicates the Iength of each drama task and the Ideal age andlevel of me partcipants. In addition, the instructions for each taskare detailed and extremely clear. The activities involving puppetsand songs are particularly creative and would provide an idealway of changing the pace and variety of a lesson.

However the improvisation activities often require more prompt-ing and language input than the book provides. Teachers shouldadapt/avoid improvisation tasks which would require an unrealistic amount of creativity from the students. (Jayne West)

Games for Children by Gordon Lewis and Gunther. Bedson OUP 1999

This is an excellent resource book for the primary classroom.Thegames and language practice tasks are aimed at children agedbetween four and eleven, It is an extremely teacher-friendly book,arranged thematically and containing step-by-step instructionsfor each game. The descriptions of the games are so clear thatmother tongue explanations would not be necessary, To help theteacher, the authors indicate the length of each task and the idealage of the participants. They also ensure that all the

Book Reviews Keeping teachers and trainers abreast of the latest publications and developments in ELT

36

activities have been tried and tested in the classroom, What ismost impressive is the vast range of activities: movement games;card and board games; drawing games; guessing games; roleplays; singing and chanting tasks, and word games, This is anideal resource book for new teachers, but it does not offer anyrevolutionary new ideas for experienced teachers, In conclusion.Games for Children is an indispensable classroom aid fornew/inexperienced teachers. (Jayne West)

A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom byMichael Berman. Crown House Publishing

The author attempts to expand our view of the three fundamental learning styles (Auditory, Visual, Kinaesthetlc) bydefining and exploring eight different kinds of lntelligence:Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical; Bodily Kinaesthetic, Musical;Spatial, Intrapersonal; and Naturalistic. The definitions in Unit Iare interesting from a psychological/learner styles perspective (I learnt, for example, that my inability to read maps indicates thatI do not have a Spatial Intelligence). However, the activities developed in the following units to allegedly cater to these various kinds of Intelligence are much more valuable from a linguistic rather than a psychological learner styles point of view:the writer produces gap-fill tasks to supposedly cater to theLogical Mathematical Intelligence. Please!! The gap-fill is just ajolly good controlled practice activity and no more! Experiencedteachers don’t need a book to tell them that a Find SomeoneWho... task appeals to Kinaesthetic Iearners. Inexperiencedteachers reading this book might labour under the illusion thatcatering to individual learner styles is more important than the linguistic input of the lesson. The book painstakingly categorisesactivities according to their suitability to different types of intelligence without considering the problem that in one classthere may be several different styles to cater to! Give this one awide berth. (Jayne West)

Poetry as a Foreign Language edited by Martin Bates. Availaible From White Adder Press. BEBC Distribution,Ablion Close Parkstone Poole, Dorset BH12 3L

This could so easily have been one of those anthologies thatmake you cringe: the kind no-one except the contributors everbuys, the kind that’s bloated with poems no-one will ever read. It is very much to the editor’s credit that Poetry as a Foreign Language isn’t like that at all.

It helps, perhaps, that the collection contains poems by a handful of poets (among them Edwin Morgan, Christine McNeil,Charles Hadfield and Michael Swan) who already enjoy consid-erable reputations in the wider poetic community. And then youthink of the calibre of yet more illustrious language teacher/writers - James Joyce, say, or John Fowles - it’s perhaps not surprising that the world of ELT should have produced a collection of such consistently high quality.

This is a substantial anthology (and, as such, inevitably containsthe very occasional turkey) and the reader’s navigation through itis facilitated both by its division into fourteen sections and aguide to the typography of the poems. The former (with titlessuch as ‘Language and Identity’, ‘A Meeting of Cultures’ andMigration and Exile’) seems useful, the latter less so. There arepoems by teachers and ex-teachers, learners and ex learnersand even learners turned teachers. There are poems written outof the experience of being in some of the most remote, exoticand tedious places in the world. Anyone involved in ELT will findmuch striking of chords and ringing of bells in these pages. l’deven go so far as to suggest that ELT practitioners with no interest in poetry will discover writing here to challenge, entertainand charm them.

Personal favourites include Jim Scrivener’s ‘The lmportance ofSocks’ with its memorable concluding couplet:’ He packedboard pens and handouts in a box. Had a quick Guinness Wenthome. Washed his socks.;’ Christine McNeil’s ‘Words in hisPocket’, John Kay’s prize winning ‘Moshav’, and Michael Swan’s‘I Can Make Myself Understood’:

Hello, taxi.Aeroport, please. Is sunny time. I like your urb. Here for congress. Academic intercourse. Are you sposed, taximan? I sposed. have three dwarfs. Residual in Roma. For my work I insane the sudents. I insane to a degree.

A minor gripe: the acronyms EFL and TEFL recur throughout thepreface and introduction. They we never very useful or meaningful. Can’t they finally be consigned to the dustbin of history? (Jeremy Page)

Market Leader by David Cotton, David Falvey and SimonKent. Longman Pearson Education Limited 2000

Market Leader is an Intermediate level Business English coursefor business people and students of business English and wasdeveloped in association with the Financial Times. This association is evident in the inclusion of the many very interesting and stimulating texts and the very generous use of fullcolour illustrations. The book indeed, looks very attractive anddoubtless the younger students of business English in particularwould find this aspect quite motivating. Some of the illustrationshowever, are rather overwhelming - very brightly coloured and insome cases, occupy more than half the page. One might question the response to this layout by older more mature business people. They might perceive it as being somewhat

37

patronising. The units themselves are well organised and offer agood variety of tasks and practice in the different skills areas.There are plenty of topical, stimulating and indeed challengingdiscussion topics and there is some very good work on the language functions appropriate for the each of the various tasks.One of the particularly strong points of the course is the CaseStudies. These are easy to set up - require a minimum of reading to prepare the participants and are structured in such away as to motivate intensive meaningful discussion. Anotherstrength is in the writing activities. I found these to be truly excellent. They are simple but nevertheless challenging, and offerclear models of the most common and really useful types of writing that would be needed by the non native speaker. Andthere is plenty of realistic writing practice to motivate the studentto revise and recycle the language learnt or practised in the particular unit. There is one element of the course however,which requires caution, and this is the grammar work. Studentsat the level the book is intended for need either, more intensiveremedial work or, more advanced grammar instruction than iswithin the scope of this book or more simply, reminders by wayof clear examples of the particular grammar point in question.

There is also a Practice File Teacher’s Resource Book to accompany the Course Book. All of the writing exercises are veryuseful. Some of the others are less so and some are even rather juvenile, and should perhaps not be suggested for use withmature experienced business people. Using the TeachersResource Book necessitates flipping through several differentsections to find all the material for a particular unit or topic. It hasthree sections: Notes on Units (very useful for non-native speakerteachers or those without business experience), Text Bank andResource Bank, and each section contains various material forthe 16 units in the course book. Why cannot all the material foreach unit simply be grouped together?

To sum up - this book is very highly recommended for the student of Business English. There are audio-tapes to accompany the course and a video which will be released laterin the year. (Gail Richards)

YOUR NOTES

106 Piccadilly London W1V 9FL

Telephone +44 (0) 20 7518 6834 +44 (0) 20 7518 6835 Fax +44 (0) 20 7518 6921

E-mail ihjournal@ihlondon.co.uk Web site www.ihlondon.com

the

CLT and the Real World by Robert O'Neill

ROLO - a replacement for PPP? by Paul Emmerson

Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Kaye Anderson

Learning, Lexis and Business English by Nick Hamilton

Accepting ICT in ELT by Howard Ramsey

Twelve Unprincipled Eclectic Pictures by Krystof Dabrowski

Classroom Ideas: Colour Cards - Motivating Young Learners by Carol Crombie and Carol Dowie

Giving Low Levels Free Rein by Jo Cooke

Using the Internet in ELT by Karen Momber

Authentic Listening by Carina Lewis

The Last Word: IH London - a Profile? by Roger Hunt

j o u r n a l

Issue No 8 £5.00

of education and development